[Scpg] Greywater Dominoes As Californians start looking seriously at using greywater for home lead to Art Ludwig. Miller- Mccune Magazine

[Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network]

Greywater Dominoes
As Californians start looking seriously at using greywater for home 
irrigation, all roads — or pipes — lead to Art Ludwig.
By: Ben Preston  | October 13, 2009 | 16:45 PM (PDT)  |   No Comments
http://www.miller-mccune.com/science-environment/greywater-dominoes-3414/
In the mountains above Santa Barbara, Calif., streams run nearly dry 
for much of the year. The one running through an area known as the 
San Marcos Trout Club, however, is a bit different. Even in the dry 
heat of summer, deep pools of cool water swirl in their sandstone 
basins as it wends through the little nook on its way to the ocean.

For Art Ludwig, founder of Oasis Design - a family-run ecological 
design company covering everything from water delivery and disposal 
to permaculture - the spot is more than just a peaceful getaway and 
outdoor office near his home; it provides inspiration when he is 
cooking up ecological solutions and designing small-scale water 
systems. "Most of what I've learned has been synthesized in the 
wilderness," he said. "The most ecological solution is the most 
economical."

Finding enough fresh water has always been a challenge for lawmakers 
and engineers alike in the arid American West. With an 
ever-increasing population and dwindling mountain snowpack - the 
spring melts of which supply the lion's share of water to Western 
rivers - water resources have become stretched thin.

According to the National Drought Mitigation Center's Drought 
Monitor, most Western states are currently experiencing drought 
conditions of varying severity, and have been for most of the past 
decade. While in the past those who guide policy have relied upon 
creative outsourcing by water officials, overtaxed reservoirs and 
river systems have caused them to look more toward conservation as a 
way to ensure that their constituents continue to receive clean, 
reliable water at their taps.

Although nothing new, diverting greywater - water from washing 
machines, showers and sinks containing far less bacteria than the 
funky brew toilets and kitchen sinks emit - for irrigation has become 
one of the primary tools in a growing arsenal of conservation methods 
being examined. Although concern has been raised about the health 
effects of using greywater to water plants, the California Department 
of Public Health does not have any cases of greywater-related 
contamination on record.

"The most dangerous thing you can do with greywater is stir a bunch 
of feces into it and overload a septic or sewer system," said Ludwig, 
adding that sewage treatment systems operating over capacity often 
dump untreated effluent into waterways.

Already in place in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Montana, Nevada and 
other Western states, standards spelling out how best to use water 
were also passed by the California Building Standards Commission on 
Aug. 4. Although California state Sen. Alan Lowenthal had already 
developed a set of greywater standards, a fourth year of statewide 
drought prompted the California Department of Housing and Community 
Development to push for emergency greywater standards at the Building 
Standards Commission.

"The reason we did the emergency standards is because in February, 
[Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger] declared a drought situation and 
directed departments to do whatever they could to enable water 
conservation," said Doug Hensel, deputy director of Housing and 
Community Development. The result was an intense series of meetings 
with stakeholder groups that helped shape the standards that were 
finally adopted in August.

"The average person wouldn't know that much about [installing 
greywater systems], so we made [the standard] kind of like a recipe 
to follow."

By all accounts a vast improvement over the limited standards 
California had before this year, Ludwig nonetheless looked to 
Arizona's laissez-faire greywater rules - in place since 2001 - 
calling it the model to emulate. The desert state's user-friendly 
two-page brochure makes it easy for homeowners to figure out how to 
use greywater safely, without impinging upon how they go about 
designing their systems.

Ludwig also advised New Mexico officials when they adopted standards 
similar to Arizona's in 2003.

"Every site is different, and so are people's [water usage] habits," 
said Daniel Wilson, a Santa Barbara-based landscape designer who has 
begun installing greywater diversion systems in conjunction with 
fruit tree planting. Despite California's relatively late entry into 
simplified greywater regulation, some 1.7 million greywater systems 
are already installed in homes across the state -there are nearly 8 
million nationwide - and until recently, only 200 of them were 
legally permitted.

"It [was] an abstinence-only greywater system. It pushed people to do 
it illegally," said Ludwig, who stressed that while permitting is 
unnecessary for simple diversion systems, standards are important to 
ensure proper use and installation.

His Web site notes the difficulty of challenging the status quo and 
remaining street legal - on one page he writes: "The more 
ecologically you live, the more illegal it is." And for that reason 
he provides both code-friendly information for prospective 
practitioners and a series of ideas for making end-runs around 
recalcitrant bureaucrats.
"State guidelines were very complicated and turned a lot of people 
off. People found that the standards were too difficult to deal 
with," said Laura Allen, a member of Oakland-based Greywater Action, 
a group heavily involved in the stakeholder process that got 
California's revised standards off the ground.

Now, as in many other Western states, California homeowners with 
greywater systems diverting washing machine effluent to irrigate 
onsite trees do not require a permit. This is where Ludwig and others 
experienced in building greywater systems come in, providing vast 
informational resources for existing and would-be greywater users. 
Not as simple as collecting laundry water in a bucket to pour on a 
garden, only certain types of plants - mostly fruit trees and 
flowers, but not vegetables such as carrots and lettuce - can benefit 
from greywater irrigation.

It also requires that homeowners, if they weren't already doing so, 
use biodegradable laundry soap, as traditional soaps would harm the 
plants. "As long as you're using the right products, [greywater 
irrigation] makes a lot of sense," said Allen, who has been using 
greywater on her kiwi and apricot trees and berry bushes for a decade.
On the whole, greywater use seems to have attracted a passionate 
group of individuals, and a wealth of information is available for 
both do-it-yourselfers and those who are simply curious.

When it comes to greywater, all roads on the information highway lead 
to Ludwig, who has been researching and designing the uses and 
impacts of greywater for nearly 20 years.

"Greywater is part of a system that would allow us to exist on 90 
percent less resources," he said, explaining that his work reflects a 
belief that water use is connected to a number of other things, 
including energy use and ocean water quality. Transporting water over 
hundreds of miles and even pumping it over a mountain range, the 
State Water Project is California's single most prolific user of 
energy, consuming about three percent of all the electricity used in 
the state, by EPA estimates. (The National Resources Defense Council 
puts that figure significantly higher, at 20 percent).

"This issue lies across the fault line of two world views. One is 
build it up to code and it's ok, and the other is to look at water 
depletion and climate change as well - the big picture," Ludwig said.

In a dilapidated trailer next to their house, Ludwig and his 
college-age daughter, Maya, usually aided by an intern or two, work 
tirelessly to compile videos, pictures, and new data for their 
seemingly endless www.oasisdesign.net. From the mountainside vantage 
point of these cramped quarters - which are perennially cluttered 
with charts, official documents, and the odd bowl of fruit - the 
distant Pacific Ocean is visible through a couple of small windows, 
reminding them how connected everything really is.
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