Centenary College, "Where the sleepy, silver bayou, / Gleams among the pines...." The Alma Mater says that the campus once had a bayou. What happened to it? There are still a few big pine trees, but much has changed over the past hundred years.
The growth of modern cities with their necessary infrastructure of concrete streets & sewerage has greatly altered local hydrology. Whereas in the past rains might saturate a richly developed soil, rainwater is now swiftly funneled across impermeable barriers of roof-and-road into storm sewers and drainage canals. For our purposes here this means that despite getting on average 50+ inches of rain per year, summer conditions can easily cause drought. Since we need to keep our wide array of arboretum species alive for academic purposes and keep the non-native grass alive for aesthetics, this means we need to supplement our natural precipitation with artificial irrigation, mostly in the form of sprinklers.
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| An in-ground network of pipes supplies well water to most of the arboretum, and much of that system can be programmed to run automatically. Some lines of irrigation must be manually turned on, and water hoses must be hauled and stretched to reach a few small patches. |
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| The sprinkler system is an absolute necessity for maintaining the health of the arboretum. The fact that it can provide an amusing diversion is a nice side-benefit. |
