Annabella: The Dam

This is your own page for the Water for the Valley project. Your tasks for every week to the end of the project are on this page.

You may use an AI helper. Copy and paste this link into the chat: https://df.valleyofgrace.co.za/cultural/education/project/llms.txt. It can check a fact or explain a hard word. Your Field Book, your map layer and your plan card are yours to make.

To see what the whole class is making, see Water for the Valley: Your Term 4 Project.

What changed on 26 October

We won’t be writing letters or holding a panel. If you started a letter, keep it in your Field Book. The class now makes two things together: a Valley Map, as one combined poster we work on in class, and a short Valley Water Plan. You keep your theme. You add one layer to the map and write one part of the plan.

Your question

Where does our valley’s water go, and who must say yes before anything changes?

You are the class expert on Theewaterskloof Dam, the river below it, and the rules about who gets water. On the class poster you paint the dam and the rivers in blue. In the plan you write Part 1: Our valley’s water.

Facts to stamp

Choose three of these for your Field Book. Tie the correct colour thread to each one.

• [IC] - Blue

• [MS] - Yellow

• [TBV] - Red

• Theewaterskloof Dam holds up to 480 million cubic metres of water. One cubic metre is 1,000 litres. It holds more than any other dam that supplies Cape Town.

• Water leaves the dam in two directions. West, through a tunnel, it goes to Cape Town. East, it goes down the Riviersonderend past Greyton and Genadendal, to farms and towns, and on to the sea at Witsand.

• The Baviaans River at Genadendal and the Gobos River at Greyton join the Riviersonderend below the dam.

• In the 2018 drought, farmers along the Riviersonderend received only 60% of the water they were allowed.

• The state looks after all water for the people. The first share is called the Reserve. It is water for people’s basic needs and for keeping rivers alive.

• One source says only about 42% of the river’s natural flow reaches the sea at Witsand.

• Nobody has asked the Department of Water and Sanitation or the Breede-Olifants Catchment Management Agency whether they would count our valley’s water.

Words to use:

• cubic metre (a box of water one metre on every side),
• Reserve (the first share of water, kept for people and for the river itself),
• release (letting water out of a dam).

Think of Europe

In Europe, who could say yes or no to a boat on a river? Who could stop it, and who could let it pass? Now ask the same about our water. Who can say yes or no to a drop of water in our valley? Bring your answer from main lesson.

Your leaky dam

Everyone in the class does this.

A gully is a deep channel that rushing rainwater has cut into a slope. A leaky dam is a low wall of stones, logs or packed branches built across a gully. When rain rushes down, the wall slows the water so it spreads out and soaks into the soil. Some water still leaks through, so the stream below keeps running. Gully stuffing means packing branches and brush into a gully so it catches soil and water. Branches cleared from pines and wattles can be used. Other small helpers are lines of stones laid across a slope, and plants along the banks to hold the soil.

You can also choose a flatter stretch of a river that a flood has damaged before. Floods tear up the banks and leave rocks scattered along the riverbed. Those rocks can be used to build the leaky dam wall, so the river slows down and spreads out there.

Find your site on Google Earth (25 minutes). With a grown-up, open the class map: https://earth.google.com/earth/d/1PejJJkRHA_WrwYwdKrSeea92u3q3vp9y?usp=sharing

1. Look at the slopes and rivers around Genadendal and Greyton. Zoom in until you can see single trees.
2. Find a gully, or a flood-damaged stretch of river. Gully clues: a dark or bare line running down a slope, a strip of green along it, or a fan of bare soil at the bottom where the water dropped what it carried. River clues: a flatter part of the river where the banks look torn or bare, and pale patches of rock and gravel spread along the riverbed.
3. Choose the spot where you would build your leaky dam.
4. Take a screenshot with your spot circled, or draw what you see. Hold your pointer on the spot and write down the numbers Google Earth shows at the bottom of the screen. Michael will use them to pin your site on the class map.

Plan around it (20 minutes). On one page, write or draw:

• why you chose this spot,
• what you would build around it, such as a path for visitors, a bench or lookout, a sign that explains how it works, a measuring post, or a nursery bed or vegetable garden below where the soil stays damp,
• what activities you would offer, such as guided walks, building days where visitors help stuff a gully, school field trips, birdwatching, or workshops that teach people to build leaky dams,
• your own theme question: Follow your gully downhill on Google Earth. Which stream or river would its water reach? Does that river join the Riviersonderend below the dam?
• one more way the valley could earn money, chosen from the list below.

Other ways the valley could earn. Each of these is an idea nobody has tested here, so give it a red thread.

• Growing vegetables for restaurants and guesthouses in Greyton
• A nursery selling young local plants for gardens and restoration work
• Selling firewood, poles and wood chips from cleared pines and wattles
• Making compost from cleared brush and garden waste
• Honey from bees kept near the fynbos
• Guided walks and hikes along restored streams
• Teaching days for schools and visitors
• A farm stall or Saturday market for valley produce
• Collecting seed from local plants for restoration projects
• Furniture and crafts made from cleared wood
• Paid work measuring rain and streams

Look on Google Earth only. Don’t build anything there just yet. Rivers are dangerous after rain, so never go to one without a grown-up. Many slopes belong to someone, so don’t write who owns the land.

This week: before the next session

About an hour and a half. This replaces the letter.

Do

1. Sketch your layer (40 minutes). On a sheet of paper, draw the dam, the tunnel going west to Cape Town, and the river going east. Draw the Baviaans and Gobos rivers joining below the dam. Add an arrow to the sea at Witsand. Mark Genadendal and Greyton. Use your sand model from Week 1 to help.
2. Plan your part of the poster (10 minutes). In class we draw the whole valley together on one big poster. Decide how you will show the dam, the tunnel and the rivers on it, and which colours you will use. Write it on your sketch.
3. Field Book page 2 (30 minutes). Draw something from the Four Corners game or the Bean Bond. Add three facts, each with a thread.

Week 3: Lay Out the Valley

A little over two hours. The leaky dam takes the extra time.

Do

1. Your leaky dam (45 minutes). Follow the steps in “Your leaky dam” above.
2. Follow the water bill (20 minutes). Ask a grown-up who your family pays for water, or ask them to show you a water bill. Write down in one sentence who collects the money. Give it a yellow thread.
3. Count the gates (30 minutes). Make a list of everyone who would have to say yes before the valley could hold more water and be paid for it. Think about the landowners, the Department of Water and Sanitation, the Breede-Olifants Catchment Management Agency, the people who run the dam, and the municipality. Draw a gate for each one. Put a red thread on each gate. Nobody has asked them.

Tell

4. Tell it back (10 minutes). Walk a grown-up along the river on your sketch, from the dam to the sea. Stop at each gate and say who would have to open it. Then show them your leaky dam site and the activities you would offer.

Think

5. Your plan card in pencil (20 minutes). Fill in your plan card for your part. Start from your leaky dam: what you would build and the activities go under “What we would do” and “What it gives the valley”. Your gates go in “What must be true first”. The biggest question is whether the people who run the dam would count water that joins the river below it.

Your plan card has five lines, with a drawing at the top:

1. What we would do (one sentence)

2. Where (point to it on the map)

3. Who could do it (organisations get a red thread)

4. What it gives the valley (water, work, money, learning or care for the land)

5. What must be true first (your open questions, each with a red thread)

6. Field Book page 3 (10 minutes). Stick in your leaky dam screenshot or drawing. Add three facts, each with a thread.

Week 4: Hold the Water

About two hours.

Do

1. Your final plan card (50 minutes). Copy your plan card out in your best writing. Change anything the class or Sam’s promise round showed you. Paint or draw the picture at the top.

Tell

2. Tell it back (15 minutes). Read your card to a grown-up. Ask them which line is least clear, and fix it.

Think

3. Field Book page 4 (40 minutes). Draw the river from the dam to the sea, with your gates along it. Add three facts, each with a thread.
4. Think of Europe (15 minutes). Read your Europe answer again. Add one sentence about what it tells you about your part of the plan.

Week 5: Make the Plan

About two hours.

Do

1. Practise your part (60 minutes). You have about two minutes at the showing. Use the Valley Map and point to the water’s road as you tell. Practise it aloud at least four times, without notes on the last two.

Tell

2. Tell it to your family (20 minutes). Show them your part as you will on the day. Ask them one thing they didn’t understand.

Think

3. Field Book page 5 (40 minutes). Draw the whole Valley Map from memory, as best you can, and mark your own layer. Add three facts, each with a thread.

Week 6: The showing

Your last Field Book page (30 minutes), after the showing. Draw the thing from this project you will remember longest. Under it, write the open questions from your part that nobody has answered yet. These are what we still don’t know.

Remember

• You don’t need to contact any organisation. Talk with your family and the adults at school.
• Write “could”, never “will”, about an organisation. Nobody has agreed to anything.
• This idea has not been discussed by the Forum yet. Keep what you find with your class and family.