By MELISSA ROBERTSON
About 150 members of three BYU wards scattered all over Y Mountain Saturday, digging trenches, repairing water bars and collecting trash for part of the LDS Church’s worldwide service day.
Norm Evenstad, a soil conservationist for the Natural Resource Conservation Service, said trenches and water bars, which were put across run-off paths where water damage was most severe, would divert water run off to grassy areas so washed-out areas could grow back. A water bar is like a speed bump made out of dirt, concrete or wood. When the water hits it, it changes the water’s path.
Soil underneath water bars on the “Y” was eroding. Fifty participants climbed to the “Y” and made a line stretching from the bottom to the middle of it, said Kreg Love, a pharmacy major from Madera, Calif. They tossed rocks to each other to fill in the eroded areas under the water bars.
Other volunteers worked lower on the mountain digging trenches. Jared Gailey, a microbiology major living in Provo, said the trenches were dug about every 30 feet on the trails.
“Hopefully, each trench will get a little more of the water, so it will dissipate,” he said. “Our goal is to have the least amount of water make it down to the bottom.”
Other volunteers wandered around the mountain picking up trash.
Lisa Johnson, a graduate student in English, said she and her friends tried doing that. “At first we got rocks in the trench, but there were too many people, so we walked along to see what we could find. I found one wrapper, so someone had picked up the trail,” she said.
Johnson said nobody really knew what was going on, so no one could help her find any work to do.
Heat was also a problem for the participants. Volunteer Danielle Myers said she was thankful when the clouds were overhead. “When the sun was out we were dying, sweating to death,” she said.
Johnson said she hoped the trenches would work to cut down erosion. But Evenstad said digging trenches and putting in water bars was only half the solution.
“When people cut across a path, and take a different route, they make a lot of trails. Water takes the path of least resistance, so when there is no vegetation, it just shoots down the trail,” Evenstad said. “We need to educate students and people going up to stay on a single trail.”
