#110 Our Version of a CCC Project

What makes this interesting is how "low-tech" it is.

In 1933, with the US in the throes of the Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Between its founding in 1933 and its closure in 1942, almost three million men took part in this program focused on improving outdoor spaces in the nation.

The CCC planted more than 3.5 billion trees. They cleared and maintained access roads, re-seeded grazing lands and implemented soil-erosion controls. It built wildlife refuges, fish-rearing facilities, water storage basins and animal shelters. At its peak, the CCC employed more that 500,000 corpsmen in 2,900 camps.

Our small streambed restoration described last week could easily have been a CCC project. For one, it did not require rocket science or artificial intelligence. We sourced all the materials used to construct it from our own site. Its design fit onto one page and could have been drawn with a pencil.

The CCC was a good idea then. It would be a good idea now

Many others have recently called for a similar effort to revive the CCC. The idea is not that far-fetched. The money could come from the $1.2 trillion federal infrastructure law passed in 2021, much of which is still uncommitted.

In the meantime we are finishing the log vanes we wrote about last week in Substack #109. The design from the US Dept. of Fish and Wildlife called for creating a large “slash pile” of logs and stumps below the last log vane. This is designed to slow the water down as it approaches the steepest part of the streambed.

When we cleared the wooded area in the recently-acquired adjacent property, we sold the marketable wood and piled up the remainder, including many, many stumps. We are using those logs and stumps to construct the hatched area in the design above labelled “WOOD/SLASH.”

The video below shows the first pieces of slash going into the streambed. We have dozens more similarly-sized pieces of slash.

As we said in last week’s Substack, there is nothing modern or elegant about this erosion-control structure, other than its simplicity. Anyone could do it. All we need is a public willing to fund projects like this and to put people—in both rural and urban areas—back to work.