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| Photo Courtesy of Paola Bouley and SPAWN A roof rain catchment project in Marin with permeable driveway in the background. |
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July 1st, 2009
SPAWN says harvesting rainwater could save rivers
Lazy Gardener
Wednesday, October 8, 2008 2:41 PM PDT
Jeanne Santangelo
In the way that everything old is new again, gardeners, builders and city planners are rediscovering rainwater harvesting. Rainwater harvesting is an ancient technique that can be adapted for residential settings as well as large-scale developments.
In Third World countries, island nations and arid areas of the United States such as Texas and Arizona, humans have a continuous history of using cisterns for farm and landscape irrigation, to flush toilets and for drinking water.
Rainwater harvesting combined with water catchment can help conserve water for use during drought or summer dry seasons and prevent stormwater flooding of urban areas.
Paola Bouley, Conservation Program Director of SPAWN has been out doing site assessments for a new Marin-wide stormwater harvesting, incentives-based, education and outreach program.
With grant support from the Marin Community Foundation, Paola is showing businesses, residents, schools and community gardens how to catch and store rainwater.
Paola said in a recent conversation, “Water supply is the biggest consumer of electricity in Marin. We have created dams and blocked rivers, to store, pump and treat water, 50 percent of which is used for irrigation in the summer. And our dams do not even meet our current high demand for water either.”
Twenty-five percent the water used by Marin residents is imported from outside the county from the Russian and Eel Rivers. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of gallons of water drain off our roofs, driveways and parking lots in the winter causing flooding and damaging our streams.
SPAWN’s rainwater-harvesting program strives to “chip away at the summer irrigation budget to become more sustainable by tapping into problematic stormwater supplies in the winter and turning these into a summer resource. We are promoting re-emerging old techniques that highlight alternative and more sustainable ways to meet Marin’s water demands.”
“SPAWN’s new program in essence is really about redefining the relationship we all have (our county has) with water ... water is precious, it is essential to all of us (humans and the salmon), and in recognition of this fact we believe that alternatives to the current “pave it-pipe it-pollute it” paradigm exist and need to be implemented fast. If we succeed, we can avoid hugely costly pipelines and CO2-intensive de-salinization plants and begin to regain our energy and water independency while simultaneously restoring our impaired streams and bays and the beautiful wildlife they support.”
Rainwater harvesting storage systems are diverse. They vary in size and material from small, recycled, 50-gallon plastic olive barrels to large 30,000-gallon cistern projects, like the one that was completed in 2006 at the Lagunitas School.
Cisterns may be made of polyethylene; they may be steel tanks with food-grade plastic liners for potable water or made of ferro-cement, the most cost effective material.
By using a rain barrel to capture rain and overflow into a rain garden or rocky swale, we are “rediscovering old ways, being local and hydrating the land, for too long rainwater has been treated like waste.”
Contact Paola regarding the Rainwater Harvesting incentives program at 663-8590 x111 or paola@tirn.net. Salmon Protection and Watershed Network (SPAWN) is a project of Turtle Island Restoration Network, www.spawnusa.org.
Their Web site includes links to recommended books, designs for simple rain barrels and further information on the Lagunitas School project.
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