FIELDS OF DREAMS // The volunteers: TESTING THE WATER

DATE                  09/25/94
NEWSPAPER             THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
SECTION               NEWS
EDITION               MORNING
PAGE                  L03
STORY LENGTH          17 INCHES
HEADLINE              FIELDS OF DREAMS // The volunteers: TESTING THE WATER // 
                         Rains are the trigger for devastating erosion
BYLINE/CREDIT         DAN FROOMKIN:The Orange County Register
SUBJECT TERMS         REPAIR:CENTRAL AMERICA:VOLUNTEERS:AGRICULTURE:LAND: 
                         ENVIRONMENT:PLANTS:TREES:WATER:RESEARCH:OC:STUDENTS
 .
  Every afternoon during Costa Rica's rainy season, the heavens open
  with a roar like a mighty river and water crashes to the ground --
  sometimes for hours.
     Nearly everyone goes inside.
     But Kristin Timmins and Kevin Buran, their hands outstretched
  and their heads tilted back, are standing in the downpour, letting
  the rain snake down their faces and soak their shirts.
     "I haven't felt that much water pressure in two weeks!" Timmins,
  24, gasps as she ducks back under cover.
     The torrential rains are not just a source of great amusement to
  Timmins and Buran, however.
     They are the trigger for what is one of the most devastating
  effects of deforestation: erosion.
     When rain forests are intact, even the fiercest deluges are
  parried, absorbed and even purified before gradually being released
  into the watersheds by the dense jungle growth.
     But when all that life is laid to waste and replaced with crops
  or cattle pastures, the rain beats on the earth with a vengeance.
     It kicks up topsoil -- and fertilizer -- and carries everything
  away through gushing rain-fed gullies into streams and rivers that
  are themselves clotted and poisoned by all the muck.
     Timmins and Buran are taking water samples from a variety of
  locations on and near Lynn Carpenter's farm to measure erosional
  runoff.
     The measurements they gather will be used over the coming years
  as a base line, to see if Carpenter's plantings help the land
  regain its ability to process water rather than slough it off  --
  and help return the muddy lake at the foot of her land to its
  original state.
     "This is something for her to compare to in the next 10 years,"
  Timmins says as she pumps up the leaky dinghy that Buran has
  volunteered to take out onto the lake for one series of tests.
     Buran, a lanky 22-year-old with sandy, shoulder-length hair, a
  scraggly goatee and a faraway look in his eyes, spends hours out on
  the lake, collecting samples in Mason jars.
     The surface-water samples are easy, but he almost falls out of
  the boat every time he reaches below for deeper water.
     When he rows ashore again, he and Timmins put the water through
  a variety of tests to determine how much oxygen is in it and how
  much phosphorous; how acid it is, how salty, how cloudy.
     It is Timmins' second summer on the farm. Last year, she helped
  plant seedlings, which grew into little saplings while she was
  completing her junior year.
     Timmins realizes that her water samples, like the rest of the
  farm, won't produce dramatic results for years, if at all. But
  that's OK. She's happy just to be a part of Carpenter's work.
     "I think what she's doing is very ambitious," Timmins says.
  "There's been so much destruction of the rain forest, somebody's
  got to do it."