AP story: Rainwater harvesting makes comeback amid severe
drought
By MALIA WOLLAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: Monday, September 1, 2008 at 4:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Monday, September 1, 2008 at 6:02 a.m.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Tara Hui climbed under her deck, nudged
past a
cluster of 55-gallon barrels and a roosting chicken, and pointed to a
shiny metal gutter spout.
JEFF CHIU / Associated Press
Tara Hui demonstrates how she drains water from bins stored
below
her deck where she harvests rainwater at her home in San Francisco.
"See that?" she said. "That's where the
rainwater comes in from the roof."
Hui is one of a growing band of people across the country
turning
to collected rainwater for nondrinking uses such as watering plants,
flushing toilets and washing laundry.
Concern over drought and wasted resources, and stricter
water
conservation laws have revitalized the practice of capturing
rainwater during storms and stockpiling it for use in drier times. A
fixture of building design in the Roman Empire and in outposts along
the American frontier, rainwater harvesting is making a comeback in
states including Texas, North Carolina and California.
"We call it 'the movement that's taking the nation by
storm,' "
said Robyn Hadley, spokeswoman for the Austin, Texas-based American
Rainwater Catchment Systems Association, whose membership has jumped
by more than 40 percent this year.
Hui, 37, got her first 55-gallon plastic barrel for free
five
years ago. The barrel had been packed with maraschino cherries, so
when rain first filled it, the water smelled like candied fruit.
Now, she has a daisy chain of 25 linked barrels under her
back
deck with a combined capacity of nearly 1,250 gallons. She built the
system herself, after searching the Internet for information and
buying the necessary plumbing parts at a hardware store. The whole
setup cost her $200.
The average American uses 101 gallons of water a day at home
and
in the yard. Add in agricultural and industrial water use and that
climbs to an average of 1,430 gallons per day per person.
Scientists warn that climate change will result in more
severe
droughts and erratic storms worldwide, and this spring was the driest
in California's 114 years of record-keeping. Extreme drought and
abnormally dry conditions persist across large swaths of the country,
with states in the West and Southeast hit hardest.
Even in a drought, it only takes a few hours of heavy rain
to fill
all 25 of Hui's barrels. She uses that water during the summer to
irrigate her back yard.
This fall, San Francisco will try to recruit more people to
hoard
the rain. The city will be putting $100,000 toward hosting how-to
workshops and offering rebates and discounts on rainwater catchment
tanks.
In addition to conserving water, these efforts help
alleviate the
problem of storm runoff. Asphalt-covered roads, sidewalks and parking
lots repel storm water, forcing it down storm drains and into creeks
rather than allowing it to soak into soil. Big flushes of storm water
in water treatment systems can send raw sewage flowing into the
ocean. Overloaded streams can cause flooding and damage salmon
habitat.
Elsewhere, roofs are being used to collect rain from Austin
to
Seattle. Santa Monica's new library sits atop a 200,000-gallon
rainwater cistern, and in August the city launched a rainwater rebate
program for homeowners. In Marin County, a recent seminar on
rainwater harvesting attracted a standing-room-only crowd of several
hundred.
Doug Pushard, a software entrepreneur and rain collection
enthusiast based in Santa Fe, N.M., runs HarvestH2O.com, a Web-based
organization providing information on rainwater harvesting. It got
more than 23,000 page views in July, almost triple the number he got
in the same month last year, along with numerous calls and
e-mails.
New companies and ingenuity in plumbing and policy are
pushing
rainwater harvesting from the off-the-grid fringe to the core of
21st-century green building design.
"You still have to be a tinkerer to make things work,
but that's
changing," Pushard said.
Every year, Sunset Magazine sponsors several "idea
houses"
featuring sustainable building design. As many as 40,000 people
stream through each house to study the latest in green architecture.
The 2007 idea houses in San Francisco and Lake Tahoe collected
rainwater, as will this year's idea house in Monterey.
"We're going to see a lot more design features for
recycled water
and rainwater catchment," said Dave Walls, executive director of the
California Building Standards Commission, which in July adopted new
building codes for the state requiring new buildings to strictly
conserve water.
In June, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave a
Washington-based nonprofit $4.2 million to determine whether
rainwater harvesting could provide potable water to the billions of
poor people worldwide who lack access to clean water. Drought-prone
and groundwater-scarce places like Australia, the Bahamas, Iran and
parts of India are already busy pooling precipitation.
"People don't think about where their water comes from
or how much
they use," Hui said as she used her collected rainwater for
irrigation. "We all need to."
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