From AP: Rainwater collectors work to ease shortages

[bkengland]

As I recall, James says that these collectors aren't really practical
for our region, but here you go as a possible FYI.
Cheers,
Bruce E

Rainwater collectors work to ease shortages

By MALIA WOLLAN
Associated Press
August 31, 2008

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.

"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 non-drinking uses like 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 hardest hit.

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 throughout the summer to
irrigate her backyard.

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," said Pushard.

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."