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THIS IS YOUR CRONKITE NEWS 2GO BRIEFING.
(Bring up music briefly and duck below and out )
I’M Ayana Hamilton
Mudslinging at Pueblo Grande Museum Archaeological Park preserves 800-year-old structure
HOST: The oldest-known commercial building still standing in Phoenix was built in 1885. It’s called the Fry Building, and it’s been home to a number of businesses in the past 138 years. But there’s something else that’s been around for centuries longer. Cronkite reporter Amber Victoria Singer got her hands dirty to find out more.
[nats of mud being mixed and thrown]
SINGER: Once a month, while weather allows, volunteers gather at Pueblo Grande museum in Phoenix to throw mud at an over 800-year-old structure. It was built by a civilization culturally related to the Hohokam (ho-HAW-come) people. The structure is called a va’aki. It sits on a tall, human-made mound of dirt. The highest room on the mound is the solstice room. The sun lines up perfectly with its two doors at sunrise during the summer solstice and sunset during the winter solstice. According to a plaque at the site, community leaders would keep track of the solstices to plan harvests and ceremonies.
(1:15) LM: The importance of the mudslinging is to preserve the va’aki… So it’s incredibly strong structure, but the outsides of the walls are subject to erosion from the rain.
SINGER: That’s city of Phoenix archaeologist Laurene Montero. She said even though the structure has been standing for centuries, it needs constant upkeep.
LM: So the mudslinging, what we do is go out there and practice stabilization,I guess that would be the kind of the more sciency name.
SINGER: No one is 100% sure what the va’aki’s original purpose was, but Montero has an idea.
LM: The va’aki, or popularly known as the platform mound, is really the last visible part of the village of Pueblo Grande that you can still see, and it was a spiritual kind of a place…
SINGER: Each room in the va’aki is made up of four cracking dirt walls. There’s a space for a doorway but no roof. There are paths that go from room to room. Some of the walls are pretty high, making a few rooms look like pits in the ground. Jim Britton has been a mudslinger for 28 years. His white hat, white shirt, white pants, and white shoes are spotted with mud.
[nats of mud being mixed]
(4:10) JB: Well we mix up the mud in a big mixing bin, it’s a huge one, usually two guys are mixing it up with a hoe, one guy on each end. One pulls it one direction, the other pulls it the other way, to get it into a consistency that can be easily applied to the eroded area of the walls.
SINGER: The mixture is two parts dirt and one part sand.
(3:36) JB: And then to that, we’re adding an amendment it’s called. It’s a polyvinyl acrylic polymer that is used to increase the ability of the dirt to stay in place during rain and stuff, so in other words … Our repair work lasts longer by adding that to the dirt and sand.
SINGER: Britton came up with the idea to add the polymer to the mixture in 2000.
[utility vehicle engine]
SINGER: After the mixture is created, it’s driven up to the va’aki in a utility vehicle – which looks like a golf cart equipped for offroading.
[mud being brushed off]
(5:26) JB: Before we can apply the mud to the wall, you have to brush off any loose material that has been eroded.
[water being slung]
JB: And then you wet down the surface.
[mud being thrown]
JB: And then you can take and throw the mud on.
The mudslingers didn’t just make this up. The method was created by the National Park Service, and it’s used to stabilize other monuments, too. Throwing the mud gives it enough momentum to stick to the walls.
[more mud-slinging]
SINGER: The Pueblo Grande va’aki is one of two in the Valley. There’s another one in Mesa.
(1:55) JB: And they were the two largest ones that were known along the Salt and Gila River.
SINGER: Britton said it’s important to keep the structure stable for the next generation.
JB: We’re saving the past for the future. So when your grandkids wanna see how the people lived 800 years ago, they have a place to go to look at.
SINGER: If you’re interested in preserving history or just need to get your anger out by throwing mud, you can email pks-dot-pgm-dot-volunteers-at-phoenix-dot-gov…. For Cronkite News in Phoenix, I’m Amber Victoria Singer.
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SRP water releases to draw down reservoirs least to Phoenix -area flooding, road closures
HOST: The Salt River Project has begun releasing water from the Bartlett Dam onto the Verde River in part due to a projected snowmelt and runoff season during March. Cronkite News Reporter Kenny Rasmussen tells us more about why water is being released right now.
RASMUSSEN: With a large amount of water incoming, the Salt River Project’s low-level release of their own supply was conducted for the sake of freeing up space. Jesus Haro, a meteorologist employed by SRP clarified in a recent interview that the release of water was not only necessary for the sake of making room but also conducted early into the season in an effort to limit the impact on various cities.
JH: “Well we pretty much work with the vast majority of the cities in the Phoenix metropolitan area, city of Mesa, city of Tempe, city of Phoenix, as well as Maricopa County and we try to keep communication transparent and upfront when releases are going to occur so that everybody has the information they need.”
RASMUSSEN: As we are going through a long-term drought lasting decades at this point, it is easy to believe that is how Arizona always is. But Haro mentions that even in spite of the state’s relative dryness, Arizona has a history of years where the weather changes the dynamic entirely.
JH: “Wet years where we get a lot of snowpack and a very active winter storm season are not unusual in Arizona weather history, particularly if you are around here in central Arizona in the seventies, eighties, and early nineties, wet years with a lot of snowpack were a lot more common, a lot more plentiful.”
RASMUSSEN: But in spite of Arizona’s history of storms, Haro did wish to note that snowpack in the Verde watershed was at a record high this year, a level unseen since 1993. Patty Likens-Garcia, also with SRP, clarifies that in spite of the storms, the vast majority of what what we think is flooding is actually dry riverbeds being filled.
PLG: “It’s important to understand that what we’re seeing here is actually not flooding. This is water releases into a normally dry riverbed. And when you see roads closed just because roads have been built over, into, on, however you want to put it, in the riverbed.”
RASMUSSEN: But despite the large amounts of water incoming, the rain at present will not be enough to ultimately resolve our drought, according to National Warning Service Phoenix Warning Coordination Meteorologist Tom Frieders.
TF: “We’re dealing with a multi-decadal drought. So it’s still going to take several seasons of above-normal precipitation like this to continue to improve our water supply issues and things like that. Certainly, there’ll be some improvements and some smaller reservoirs, but the larger reservoirs where we get a lot of our water supplies are still going to be low for sure.”
Kenny Rasmussen, Cronkite News…
A river does run through it: LA residents work to save the neglected Los Angeles River
HOST: It’s not the Rio Grande, Colorado, or even the Gila. It is probably the most unloved river in the country. But an artistic-minded group of environmentalists is out trying to save the neglected Los Angeles River that winds through the heart of the West’s biggest metropolis. They’re doing it through a story slam! I was there to witness the love the community has for this historic river.
{Audio opening}: *Frogs croaking* “And so I’m gonna start out, you know, playing our namesake species of Frogtown.
HAMILTON: It was a chilly night in Frogtown, a section in Los Angeles where people gathered around at the local brewery to hear storytellers share their personal connection to the L.A. River!
Audio Clip {FLYNN}- “We are so excited for what is in store tonight. We are the 51 miles team, and we would like to welcome you to the LA River Story Slam.”
HAMILTON: According to keeptheriverwet.org, “The L.A. River spans 51 miles with sections of wetlands, natural habitat, and green space that run through many of Los Angeles’s diverse communities.” However, most of the river is encased in concrete and is now used as more of a flood control channel.
Hannah Michael Flynn is a part of the Fifty-One Miles Team, which is comprised of three landscape architecture graduate students. They partnered with Friends of the Los Angeles River and Nova Community Arts. The team is joined by a documentary filmmaker to document the 51-mile, six-day excursion of the river’s current conditions, with a focus being on arts, culture, habitat, access and the human experience.
{FLYNN}: “It’s important to acknowledge that this land has been stewarded for countless generations by the Indigenous people called the Tonga. We honor the cultural wisdom practices that these communities have used to live in harmony with and take care of California’s native ecosystems for thousands of years. Though these communities have been deeply and irreparably harmed by European and American colonizers, the people, language and culture still thrive today.”
HAMILTON: One storyteller was an artist John Kosta, who used his time to thank those whose activism changed the course of the River’s history.
KOSTA: “How many people here have heard of Lewis McAdams? One of the original founders of the organization Friends of the L.A. River in 1985, he and several colleagues they cut a hole in the chain link fence near the First Street Bridge, claiming to bring the river back to life through a combination of art, politics and magic, that’s why we’re here today.”
HAMILTON: Those frogs you heard at the beginning were a part of Steve Appleton’s story. They were very common to see in the 70s. Appleton is deeply involved in river restoration and revitalization because he wants to continue to grow the frog’s habitat in the river.
APPLETON: “You can read many press descriptions of Frogtown is named because there used to be frogs there. Okay? You can’t see it, but I’m telling you, there it is. 2022, the Baja California Chorus Frog here in Elysian Valley.”
HAMILTON: Appleton wants the community to embrace the frogs and invites them to come out and observe the amphibians in Frogtown. At the end of the night, Chief Operations Officer Dennis Mabasa wanted to remind everyone of the purpose of the L.A. River.
MABASA: “We need to recognize that the LA River is one of Los Angeles’s greatest tools for climate resilience. Our greatest tools for climate resilience. Yeah, shout out to LA River! Thanks, girl! We also need to recognize, right now, the LA River is under threat!”
HAMILTON: If you go to keepthewaterwet.org, you can learn about why the LA River is central to creating a vibrant and resilient community and ecosystem. “Keeping water in the River is important for connecting local communities to this natural resource. Maintaining sustainable flows will ensure a healthy Los Angeles for generations to come.”
For Cronkite News Los Angeles, I’m Ayana Hamilton…
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HOST: WE HAD HELP TODAY FROM Amber Victoria Singer and Kenneth Rasmussen.
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YOU CAN LEARN MORE ABOUT THE STORIES YOU HEARD IN TODAY’S NEWS UPDATE BY GOING TO CRONKITENEWS-DOT-AZPBS-DOT-ORG.
THAT’S ALL FOR YOUR CRONKITE NEWS 2 GO. I’M Ayana Hamilton.
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