One Man Cut Six Holes In An Arizona Curb. What Grew Back Is Unbelievable

One Man Cut Six Holes In An Arizona Curb. What Grew Back Is Unbelievable In 1998, one man in Tucson, Arizona broke the law with a handsaw to catch the rain everyone else was throwing away. He cut six holes into a city curb so street runoff could feed the ground instead of the storm drain. Thirty years later, his dead desert street is buried in shade, and the same city that once outlawed his idea now writes it into the building code. This is the story of Brad Lancaster and the Dunbar Spring neighborhood: how a single illegal curb cut grew into a citywide movement that made the ground 30 degrees cooler in the shade, brought more than two dozen native bird species back to bare asphalt, and turned a public street into free food. The desert was never dead. It was thirsty. Subscribe to Comeback Atlas for more stories of dead places brought back to life. SOURCES AND FURTHER READING → Brad Lancaster (background): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_La... → Brad Lancaster's own site, methods and incentives: https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/r... → Tucson's rain-catching revolution (High Country News): https://www.hcn.org/issues/47-7/tucso... → City of Tucson, Storm to Shade program: https://www.tucsonaz.gov/Departments/... → Tucson rainwater harvesting rebate: https://www.tucsonaz.gov/Departments/... → Tucson water harvesting ordinances: https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/r... → Storm to Shade, building a cooler city (AWWA): https://www.awwa.org/AWWA-Articles/tu... → Tucson water facts and the CAP canal (USU Extension): https://extension.usu.edu/sustainabil... → Low impact development in Tucson (UA Water Resources Research Center): https://wrrc.arizona.edu/LID-green-in... → 645 heat deaths, Maricopa County 2023 (Maricopa County Public Health): https://www.maricopa.gov/CivicAlerts.... → Same report (NBC News): https://www.nbcnews.com/science/envir... #Tucson #RainwaterHarvesting #Arizona #DesertGreening #Permaculture