Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond by Brad Lancaster

by Brad Lancaster, www.HarvestingRainwater.com, © 2010

Number 3 in a series of Drops in a Bucket blog entries on Brad Lancaster’s and David Eisenberg’s U.S. State Department-sponsored adventures and gleanings in the Middle East

Al Absaa, Saudi Arabia, April 2009

At Al Absaa we toured irrigation projects within the largest oasis in Saudi Arabia. Over one million date palms grow here. But the springs that have fed the oasis for generations are going dry. Oil drilling by Aramco has diverted, blocked, or consumed water flows that used to feed the oasis. The city of 1.5 million is also rapidly growing and consuming additional water. This is a story I encounter again and again the world over; this time it just happens to be in Saudi Arabia.

To keep the oasis and the agriculture watered, 75,000 cubic meters of treated sewage per day are directed to the fields. There are 1,500 kilometers of irrigation canals. Every year, 45 kilometers of these canals are converted to sealed or covered canals. Farmers that flood-irrigate get 3 Saudi riyals (one SR equals about US$0.27) per kilogram of their dates. Those that use drip irrigation get 5 SR/kg. Eighty million riyals is being spent to purify irrigation drainage and sewage, which is then blended with spring water from 32 natural springs before being directed into the irrigation system. The sewage from a city 140 km away will also be directed to the oasis by 2010. Nonetheless, the water table continues to drop.

Recycled water directed into the irrigation canals

Pumps used to move the recycled water through the irrigation system

One spring, “The Mother of Seven (Streams),” is now the mother of none. Twenty years ago it stopped flowing on its own. Water must now be pumped. We looked down into the deep hole from which the spring water used to flow. The hole was dripping, but empty.

The pump house and grate over the spring

The spring

Our hosts and guides

Speaking to the father and son mentioned above. Photo by David Eisenberg.

A father and son were swimming in a pool fed by the spring’s pumps. The father told me that the water used to be warmer, that he always swam here as a boy, and was glad his son could do likewise. I wondered if there would be water here for his grandson to swim in.

The oil drilling, along with the rapid growth and consumption made possible by cheap oil, are killing the oasis. In a way, for the short-term, the cheap oil is also extending the life of the oasis by powering pumping and treatment. But this life extension is completely oil-dependent, and there are many problems with pollution caused by the oil consumption. The oasis thrived for hundreds of years requiring no pumps, no power. The water was readily accessible. When the oil runs out, it may be that no one will be able to access the water because there will be no power to run the pumps. Though if the excessive pumping stops, maybe, very slowly, the ground water will eventually rise again.

While, the Saudi efforts to save or at least extend the life of the oasis are very impressive, I couldn’t help but think that more resources should be invested in restoring (and preventing further destruction of) the natural system, rather than just the mechanical.

Palm frond fence. Others in the area were made only of palm fronds – a great reuse of locally abundant materials.

After touring the irrigation system, our enthusiastic, ever-gracious guide Ibrahim lead us to one of the many highlights of the trip – Red Bread or Hasawi bread.

On the front porch of an old roadside shop sat the rotund baker. When we arrived he went to work slapping 12-inch-wide flatbreads up against the inside of a wood-fired oven shaped like an olla. The bread stuck to the side of the oven and when removed was absolutely delicious. It was spiced with dates and fennel — I was in heaven. Not just because of the incredible food, but because this place was old and felt rooted and real. The dates were from just outside the shop. No new, modern glitz. Just great local food. I dreamed that if I were living here, I’d be a daily regular and maybe even an apprentice.

Red bread ready to eat

Red bread being made

See the books Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond for strategies that help restore natural water systems. And see the Drops in the Bucket Blog at www.HarvestingRainwater.com for more dispatches from the Middle East and beyond.

or If You Pray for Rain – Harvest It

By Brad Lancaster, www.HarvestingRainwater.com, ©2010

Number 2 in a series of Drops in a Bucket blog entries on Brad Lancaster’s and David Eisenberg’s U.S. State Department-sponsored adventures and gleanings in the Middle East

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, April 2009

Most of the water people now drink in Saudi Arabia is desalinated seawater. And there are great costs, among them air pollution from the power plants which burn oil to run the desalination plants. We read articles daily on the many people falling ill from the pollution.

Air pollution from Jeddah power plant that powers desalination plant. Courtesy of David Eisenberg.

The new Saudi Arabia is very dependent on this oil, not only for water, but for the mechanical heating and cooling of the new modern buildings of imported concrete, steel, and glass.

New stand-alone modern high-rise and its conceptual “courtyard” (vertical space in the glass wall) referencing the functional traditional courtyards where people gathered in a passively protected microclimate

Traditional old-Jeddah courtyard created by the shelter of clustered buildings

But the traditional dynamic Saudi culture was borne from surviving and thriving in this hot, dry climate — without oil, imported building materials, or appliances.  We wanted to see the old practices of harvesting water, building with local materials, and passive cooling and heating. So, we headed for old Jeddah.

Old Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is a gem, and as our guide Sami promised, it is replete with a rich tradition of harvesting rainwater, life, and vernacular architecture. Sami Nawwar was our lively host. He is caretaker of the grand Nasseif House/Al Balad at the core of old Jeddah. Sami is hugely excited about old Jeddah and has been fighting to save it for over 40 years. (Throughout our travels we saw the rapid demolition of the old, earthen or coral, passively cooled, pre-oil sections of cities and towns to make way for imported-resource-dependent modern buildings.)

Nasseif House/Al Balad in old Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Into the Nasseif House we went. The ceilings are very tall to gain the benefits of passive cooling. Ample shaded windows catch cooling sea breezes. And the walls are made of coral brick interlaced with wooden bond beams, of sorts, every five courses or so to make the building safer in earthquakes. The staircase was built very wide with short steps so horses could easily climb to the top.

Sami, our gracious host. See brown wooden bond beams in the wall behind him. They help stabilize the coral brick walls in earthquakes.

Coral brick

Then evening prayer began and Sami shouted, “Quick, to the top! You must hear the prayers from the roof!” From every direction came the call to prayer, rising and falling like the chaotic roof lines around us. Amazing. As the sun set and darkness fell over the city we had tea on the roof, the cooling breeze refreshing us.

In the heyday of Nasseif House/Al Balad, children would sweep off the roof before the rains, and the rainfall would be directed to downspouts taking the water to the huge basement cistern. All non-human waste was composted or fed to livestock. Human waste went into a septic tank that was cleared once a year, then washed with salt. (I did not find out where the human waste went after being cleared from the septic tank.) [Entry continues below.]

Skyline view #1 from rooftop

Skyline view #2 from rooftop

Skyline view #3 from rooftop

Looking down into the neighborhood from rooftop

Looking out into Jeddah from rooftop

Tea on rooftop

Distant gas flame seen from rooftop

Cistern is below the floor. Note cistern hatch.

Cistern hatch and cistern below

BREAK]
“We’re late, we’ve got to go!” our U.S. State Department chaperones informed us. But Sami had promised he’d take me inside a neighboring cistern. I shot him a look. “Follow me,” he said, and we ran past the group. We rushed out of the building, down the street, and along the old mosque.

Mosque and stores

Dress shop we entered on left

Turning sharply we entered a modern women’s clothing shop, and sped to the back. Sami stopped in front of a dress hanging on a wall and said, “We are here.”

The secret cistern entrance

He then pushed the dress aside, revealing a hidden door. We stepped down into a massive cistern with vaulted ceilings. It was the cistern for the mosque. I was having so much fun. We had entered a hidden world, feeling something like the half floor in the movie Being John Malkovich. It was also further confirmation that every culture with a dry season has a tradition of water harvesting, and Jeddah was no exception. With just over 2 inches (50 mm) of rain a year it was not only possible, but absolutely necessary. [Entry continues below.]

Just a small part of the vast cistern (now used for the storage of clothes) below the mosque

Cistern inlet and outlet in cistern ceiling. Not currently in use.

These cisterns are seldom used today, what with the temporary abundance of plumbed and pumped distilled seawater, but I feel they are a major part of the solution for the past, today, and the future. These cisterns were the water source of the past. And they could be the, or at least a considerable, water source of today and tomorrow. They work on gravity, not pumps. They do not require pipes throughout the city, only pipes from every roof to a tank below. Beneficial redundancy and resiliency. They also reduce flooding.

Jeddah gets little rain, but most of it comes all at once in big downpours. After our visit floods did major damage in Jeddah. Sprawling construction of new buildings and roads is occurring all over, paving ever more of the watershed. Unfortunately the runoff from this new infrastructure (and the old) is now directed to streets rather than tanks. Thus these floods are more human-created than weather-created.

There is a rich history of praying for rain in this dry country, but the management of that rain has been largely forgotten with the temporarily available “cheap” oil and desalinated water. Much of the answer to those prayers lurks under floors and behind dresses, waiting to be remembered.

See Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1, for more on this topic. And note that this first book will be available in Arabic by the end of this year (2010). Check back at www.HarvestingRainwater.com for further updates.

or If You and Your Drink Sweat, Then Harvest Condensate

By Brad Lancaster, www.HarvestingRainwater.com, ©2010

I am finally getting to the sharing of my travel gleanings. This is the first of a series to follow – so keep checking back. This piece is from my U.S. State Department-sponsored trip to Jordan and Saudi Arabia in 2009. David Eisenberg of DCAT and I were sent as part of an Earth Day-themed cross-cultural exchange. David spoke about green building. I spoke about water harvesting. The trip was incredible, perhaps most of all due to the face-to-face interactions with Jordanians and Saudis – all of whom were incredibly welcoming, gracious hosts. This breed friendships and sharing, rather than the fear generated by the aggression of politicians and nations and misinformation in the media. My heartfelt thanks to all our Jordanian, Saudi, and State-Department hosts.

April 2009

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, receives only about 2 inches (50 mm) of rain a year. Being that dry, it was odd that water was flowing down the streets and mosquitoes were fierce.

In this hot and humid coastal desert climate, air conditioners abound and their condensate steadily and wastefully drips into the street, pooling where mosquito populations then mushroom. But on occasion you see a wild matrix of funnels and hoses directing that condensate from coolers to courtyard plantings. Here where rainfall is low, but humidity intense, the potential for condensate and dew harvesting is very high.

Bucket and condensate creek, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Hoses directing air-conditioner condensate to courtyard plantings, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

How much condensate can you harvest?

IN A DRY CLIMATE/SEASON:
• A home air conditioner can generate 0.25 gallons (1 liter) of condensate/day

• A large commercial air conditioner can generate 500 gallons (1,900 liters)/day

IN A HUMID CLIMATE/SEASON:
• A home air conditioner can generate 18 gallons (68 liters) of condensate/day

• A large commercial air conditioner can generate 2,000 gallons (7,500 liters)/day

In the humid climate of Austin, Texas (USA), the condensate from the City Hall air conditioners provides all the water needed for a large waterfall at the City Hall entrance.

Top of the Austin City Hall air-conditioner-condensate waterfall

Bottom of the Austin City Hall air-conditioner-condensate waterfall

Where does your condensate go? If to the sewer drain, redirect it to water-harvesting earthworks and their associated plantings.

Condensate is distilled water. It does not contain salt. Thus it is a high-quality water source. Though there is the possibility of the condensate leaching lead from lead-based solder, if this is used in the cooler’s plumbing, or copper from copper pipes. Air-conditioner manufacturers take note: you can make a cooler without these toxic materials, and then market your appliance as both an air conditioner and a water machine.

Can you harvest condensate in your area? If you have condensate then the answer is yes.

The signs are clear when that harvest is potentially abundant – you sweat like mad and so does your cool drink (condensate beading profusely on your glass).

See Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 2: Water-Harvesting Earthworks for more on this, including a table helping you estimate your condensate volume.

Many thanks to Craig Mackintosh for the permission to repost a portion of his blog entry, enhanced with his own beautiful photographs, describing some of his Middle-Eastern travel experiences and the West Bank’s first PDC, which Murad Alkhuffash, David Spicer, and I just finished teaching. Visit permaculture.org.au/2010/06/30/letters-from-the-west-bank-seeds-of-hope-scattered-from-the-west-banks-first-pdc to read Craig’s blog entry in its entirety.

Letters from the West Bank – Seeds of Hope Scattered from the West Bank’s First PDC

by Craig Mackintosh June 30, 2010

The view at sunset, westwards from Marda, Palestine
All photographs © copyright Craig Mackintosh

This is now the second time I’ve had an automatic weapon aimed at me. I hope it doesn’t become a habit….

I was heading back from a short visit at a permaculture demonstration site in the Salfit district of the West Bank, via Jericho, returning to Jordan over the King Hussein/Allenby Bridge crossing. Being on a bus full of Palestinians taking the same route, I ended up funneled through the security process reserved for them instead of the usual tourist path held for non-Palestinians coming out of Jerusalem or elsewhere. The first of several stages of border control had us all off the bus to pass through a body scanner. The woman with the Galil kept it trained on the queue, reinforced with a serious look of concentration on her face. Being last in line as I collected my gear after passing through the scanner, I was the only one left to point the rifle at, so the barrel kept pace with me as I began my walk back to the bus.

Realising my vulnerability in this situation, and the tragedy of circumstances that created it, I felt a strange desire to reach into the soul of this particular soldier. This woman, at that particular moment, had me within a finger’s twitch of finalising my life, should she choose to do so – but, being a fellow human being, I still wanted to catch a glimpse of who she really was, inside.

[...]

[Here] I will … shift focus to the productive labours of Murad Alkufash towards putting his community onto a more sustainable platform, where such work has enormous potential to reduce the need for contention over land and resources, whilst inspiring others in the region – of any race, religion and creed – to do likewise.

PDC instructors (left to right): Brad Lancaster, David Spicer and Murad Alkufash

To read Craig’s blog entry in its entirety and see many more photographs of the region, the Marda site, the course, the students, and some of the work that was completed, go to: permaculture.org.au/2010/06/30/letters-from-the-west-bank-seeds-of-hope-scattered-from-the-west-banks-first-pdc

By Brad Lancaster

© 2010 www.HarvestingRainwater.com

Watergy is a term coined to describe the interconnection of water and energy. Every time we consume power we consume water. This is because water is used in the generation of our power – in Arizona this figure ranges from 0.001 to 56 gallons of water per kWh of power consumed.¹ Therefore, anything we can do to reduce our power consumption also reduces our water consumption.

Typically the amount of water consumed during power generation is much greater when the power is generated at centralized power plants, as opposed to on-site with renewable power production such as rooftop solar, whose water consumption is negligible.

Introducing a Watergy Cost Calculator for You and Your Community

How much water is expended in the generation of electricity from different sources?

How much energy, and subsequently embedded water, do average U.S. and Arizona households use per month, depending on where their energy comes from?

How about you and your community?

Use our interactive online Community Watergy Calculator to find out.

The Watergy Cost Calculator. Notice how a Tucson, Arizona, household consumes 558 gallons of water per month via its electricity consumption if it gets its power from coal (the primary source of electricity in Tucson), but consumes only 1 gallon of water per month via its electricity consumption if it gets its power from rooftop solar. Now let’s go up in scale. Notice how all Tucson households combined consume 112,161,890 gallons of water per month via their combined electrical consumption if they get their power from coal, but they would consume only 219,925 gallons of water per month via their combined electrical consumption if they were to get their power from rooftop solar. Click the image above to visit our interactive online Watergy Calculator, where you can enter the number of households in your community to generate ballpark numbers for how much water your community consumes through its power generation.

The Community Watergy Calculator was conceived of by me, and created by Megan Hartman, based mainly on watergy data for Arizona from this wonderful and succinct resource “The Water Costs of Electricity in Arizona.”

Still more watergy information can be found at www.harvestingrainwater.com/watergy-climate.

Before I speak or teach in various communities, Megan generates one-page Water Conservation and Climate Data sheets (newer versions contain additional information for site analysis and are called Patterns of Climate, Water Per Capita, Watergy, and Sun) for those communities. Many of these are available here, with more being added on a regular basis. These spreadsheets also list:

• What percentage of the community’s energy consumption is used to move (or move and treat water), or the number of average energy-consuming homes that could be powered with the energy used to pump/treat water, depending on the data we are able to obtain.

• How much rain per person per day falls on the community in a typical year (rainfall GPCD) compared to how many gallons of municipal water per person per day are consumed in a typical year (municipal GPCD). In most cases, per year, a greater volume of rain falls on the community than is provided by the municipality. This helps make the case that if the community were to harvest and utilize more of that free, high-quality rainwater, it could reduce or eliminate its depletion of local water sources, and reduce or eliminate the “need” for the high cost/high energy importation of water from elsewhere.

Patterns of Climate, Water Per Capita, Watergy and Sun for Tucson, AZ. Notice how the average Tucsonan uses 112 gallons of municipal water per day. And notice how during an average year there are 198 gallons of rain available per person per day – if only we were to harvest that rain and make it available throughout the year. To arrive at this rainfall GPCD figure, the spreadsheet calculates how much rain falls on the surface area of Tucson in a year of average rainfall, then divides that figure by 365 (days per year), and then divides the result by the population of Tucson. Also notice that 44% of the City of Tucson’s annual municipal energy consumption is used to move and treat water.

For simple and effective tips on how you can greatly reduce your energy consumption at home; increase your on-site passive heating, cooling, and solar power production; and enhance comfort and productivity, see Chapter 4 of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1. The whole book is packed with great info on how you can make progress on goals like these, while greatly enhancing the potential and use of your local rainfall, stormwater, greywater, and more.

1. Extrapolated from Water Costs of Electricity in Arizona, a Project Fact Sheet of the Arizona Water Institute (Tucson, Arizona) from a 2007 investigation by Pasqualetti & Kelley. Fact Sheet ID: AWI-07-102 Pasqualetti.

By Julia Fonseca

Whew, digging swales and basins is hard work!  Gutters and tanks are expensive.  And as the skimpy summer rains of 2009 demonstrated, how do you harvest rain when the rain refuses to fall?

Fortunately, there is a way to harvest water, even during droughts.  It costs nothing, and requires no expenditure of energy.  Can this be true?  Grab yourself a cool drink, take a seat, and let the litter fall.  Leaf and stem litter, that is.

A handful of mesquite leaf litter, delivered free of charge by the canopy overhead, can help retain water on your landscape. Photo credit: Julia Fonseca

You’ve been spending too much time raking and bagging those leaves, seed pods and twigs.  They could be working for you, if you don’t throw them out.  No, I’m not talking about composting.  Composting is work too! But if you just left the litter where it fell, it would in time form a nice natural mulch that would slow erosion, build up the water-holding ability of the soil, and help make the soil easier to dig, if you do decide to dig a swale someday.  Be a litter harvester!

Plant litter is so important that it is one of the three key measurements that the Natural Resources Conservation Service uses as a measure of watershed condition.  Plant cover, litter, and rock all help stem erosion of sloping land.  If it’s not raining, only litter and rock can retard runoff, and shade the soil, AND retain moisture.  (But see my rant against crushed rock landscaping.)

A layer of litter will work for you every time it rains well enough to penetrate the litter layer, making it more difficult for the sun to evaporate moisture from the soil below. So, if you do need to rake up litter, then consider moving it to areas where it can mulch a plant.

Even when it isn’t raining, a layer of leaf litter recruits workers to improve your soil. Unlike rock, leaf and twig litter is readily colonized by tiny organisms, and those attract others and pretty soon you have unpaid laborers tunneling into your soil, creating “macropores” for better, deeper infiltration.  In urban Tucson you can also get thrashers, cactus wrens and towhees tilling the ground and scratching for goodies!

All work together to decompose your litter into smaller pieces, and that helps pump extra carbon into the soil.  Extra carbon in your soils is part of the magic.  Soil carbon boosts the ability of the soil to hold water for later use by plants, resulting in a healthier and more drought-resistant landscape.

By Brad Lancaster

© 2010 www.HarvestingRainwater.com

Rainwater is known as “sweet water” throughout much of the world due to its pure “sweet” flavor when compared to brackish, alkaline, chemically-treated, or polluted ground and surface waters. Now it is also known as “beer water.” And folks, it is good – very good.

I sampled numerous pints of Golden Number Ale, a deliciously smooth beer made with rainwater harvested off the roof of the 5 Seasons Brewery in Atlanta, Georgia, while in town to attend the American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association (ARCSA) conference of 2009.

Rain beer

Great folks enjoying great rain beer

Drinking rain beer with wonderful Rain Harvest Systems personnel

This rain beer was a first for the brewery, and a huge success. First off, water tests found the quality of the harvested water:

easily passed all EPA requirements, and

exceeded that of Atlanta’s municipal water (link).

The soft quality of rainwater is also superior for brewing, according to 5 Seasons’ master brewer, Crawford Moran, since it contains a fraction of the dissolved minerals of harder city water. Moreover, it is excellent drinking water. I found the taste of Atlanta’s tap water disgusting, but chugged down the sweet rainwater. And soon you may be able to as well, since 5 Seasons is looking into using rainwater for all its restaurant’s table water.

Secondly, the brew resulted in a flood of glowing media attention, including coverage by CNN, and a greater public awareness of the potential of rainwater collection.

Yet 5 Season’s harvesting practices go well beyond the beer.

It reuses the waste vegetable oil from the kitchen both to boil the blend of ingredients called “wort“ used to make beer, as well as to power its fleet of greasel-fueled catering vehicles.

Collecting used cooking oil from the kitchen above in the white tank within the basement below

5 Seasons catering truck fueled by biodiesel made from used fryer oil

Some of the spent grain from the brewing process is then used to make bread served in the brewery’s restaurant. A local farmer takes the rest, composts it, and then returns the nutrients by providing the restaurant with locally grown organic produce. (Many friends and I have found the spent mash also makes a great free source of feed for chickens and goats).

Collecting the used mash from the brewing process. Used cooking oil fuels the burners cooking the batches of beer.

Chowing down on tasty spent-beer-mash bread

These practices connect/reconnect the brewery and its clientele with some of their local life cycles, resource bases, and community, while also enhancing resiliency in times of dwindling water. Atlanta gets much of its water by pumping in over-allocated Chatahoochee River water. Court battles with other communities using that water threaten to cut Atlanta off from its current take. But as long as it rains, there will be rain beer because it is made with 100% gravity-delivered rainwater collected and filtered on site.

Considering that Atlanta’s annual rainfall averages 50 inches (1,270 mm), that 5 Season’s water tank capacity is 850 gallons, and that the roof area draining to the tank is about 1,800 square feet (167 m²), brewmaster Moran figures that 5 Season’s set-up provides enough water to brew a batch of beer with every 30 minutes of rain (each batch requiring 650 gallons (2,460 liters) of rainwater.

5 Seasons' rainwater cistern below roof catchment

Roof area draining to cistern

This is a boon in both dry and wet years. In dry years the rain beer production does not strain local water supplies. And in both wet and dry years the rain collection reduces the flooding threat for downstream areas of the community during storms by slowing, spreading, and sinking the water flow higher in the watershed through local beer.

This ratchets the brewery’s efforts in the slow food movement even higher into the realm of the growing slow water movement, both of which are renowned for delicious delights that celebrate and enhance local resources in a way that is a bun dancing fun!

Sipping delicious sweet water -- harvested rain

Chugging down that delicious rainwater!

Details:

RainHarvest, a nearby locally owned business, provided 5 Seasons Brewery with all the equipment needed to harvest the rain, including 6 stages of filtration followed by dual-beam ultraviolet sterilization. The primary system components include:

• Leaf Eater preliminary leaf and debris filter

• 4″ First Flush Diverter

• Graf Optimx Pro filter

• Rainwater collection tank (existing tank is being upgraded to larger size)

• Graf 1″ floating extraction filter

• Goulds 1/2 Horsepower Pump

• SmartPress Pump Controller

• Two Full Flow 20″ Filter Units ((1) 5 micron particle filter and (1) 1 micron absolute carbon block)

• UV Pure Dual-beam UV Sterilizer

For more info on this system, water tests, and RainHarvest see:

www.RainHarvest.com/info/beer

Post-tank filtration (micron filter, carbon filter, UV light)

Pre-tank filtration

Update: April 2010
Two months after my visit to the 5 Seasons Brewery, the Fulton County Health Department shut down the production of rain beer. According to Russ Jackson of RainHarvest Systems, the Health Department had no legal ability to do so, and thus it (who?) pushed the case up the chain to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (GEPD).  The GEPD then claimed that the rainwater harvesting system was a public water system, so 5 Seasons would need a permit to operate a public water system. But there is no infrastructure within the GEPD to address rainwater as a source for a public water system. Rather than adopt the necessary codes/guidelines /etc., the GEPD has said that this matter is out of their jurisdiction. So for right now, 5 Seasons is unable to operate their rain brew system, since the bureaucracy has not expanded its box to incorporate the out-of-the-box rainwater-harvesting – despite the fact that the harvested and filtered rainwater quality exceeds the municipal water system’s water quality.

But 5 Seasons Brewery and RainHarvest Systems are not giving up. Stay tuned for the next development.

By Brad Lancaster

© 2010 Drops in a Bucket Blog, www.HarvestingRainwater.com

When I was little I was terrified of death. I often cried myself to sleep as I thought of the end of life. It seemed so bleak, pointless, and severe.

Mom tried to comfort me with the concept of going to heaven. This did not reassure me at all. “How do you know there is a heaven?” I’d ask. “Have you been there?”

Eventually, I just numbed myself to the fear by burying it in the recesses of my mind and body.

Years later the fear evaporated with an incredible discovery – composting. Yes! Here was tangible proof that there was life after death, that everything did not just end/stop/vanish with death. Instead, things transformed. In the compost pile I saw kitchen scraps, weeds, and a dead chicken decompose into beautiful, rich, fertile soil in which earthworms, mycelia, chiles, and all kinds of new life grew.

Death no longer scared me, now it excited me. My composting dead body could generate myriad life! Don’t get me wrong: I’m in no rush to experience this. But when it eventually does happen – no problem.

Maybe.

My dead body could generate life, or more death depending on how it is disposed of.

The conventional death industry embalms bodies with a toxic brew of formaldehyde, phenol, and menthol, which can contaminate groundwater and generate cancer and other disease in those doing the embalming.¹ According to Grave Matters, today the U.S. funeral industry buries over 3 pounds of the formaldehyde-based “formalin” with every embalmed body (totaling 800,000 gallons [3,028,000 liters] of formaldehyde a year),² while from the Civil War era to 1910, arsenic, zinc, and lead where the preferred toxic embalming compounds.³

Then there are the caskets, turning cemeteries into landfills. Grave Matters states, “Over time the typical ten-acre [4 ha] swath of cemetery ground contains enough coffin wood to construct more than forty houses, nine hundred-plus tons [816,000 kg] of casket steel, and another twenty thousand tons [18,143,000 kg] of vault concrete.”⁴

A conventional cemetery

Cremation avoids embalming toxins, and the body can be burned in a shroud or cardboard container instead of a standard casket to consume less fuel and release fewer pollutants. But the fuel needed to incinerate the body is still substantial. Carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide are typical emissions along with toxic trace metals such as mercury – which comes from dental fillings (a good reason to ask for mercury-free fillings while alive).

All crematories in the U.S. may emit 5,000 pounds [2,267 kg] of mercury a year, while in the United Kingdom four times that amount is emitted due to a higher percent of the population choosing cremation.⁵

Depressing.

Deadening.

Friend and mentor Tim Murphy gave me a different vision. He wants to be buried toxin-free and naked, ass up, in the fetal position, with an acorn up his butt. “Plant me, and plant a tree. Years later you and others can come sit under my shade, harvest some acorns, and celebrate what is possible.”

I sometimes think of Tim as a radical traditionalist, and a small, but growing segment of the death industry is enabling others to take a similar path that encourages the natural decomposition of the dead and regeneration of other life from the process rather than trying to halt or slow what will eventually happen anyway. The website www.GreenBurialCouncil.org is one conduit to this path. And the book Caring for the Dead: A Complete Guide for Those Making Funeral Arrangements with or without a Funeral Director by Lisa Carlson is another conduit if you want to reduce or eliminate your participation in a death industry.

A green burial does not allow toxic embalming, concrete vaults, or elaborate caskets, which can reduce the cost of a burial by $8,000 to $12,000, according to memorial ecologist Joe Whittaker. Young trees or an engraved fieldstone are recommended over tombstones.

I experienced a new green or conservation burial ground for all faiths first hand at Honey Creek Woodlands just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. It is a beautiful place with very caring and dedicated staff, including Joe Whittaker. And it is erupting with new life.

It is located on and beside a section of once-grazed and clear-cut forest in the heart of the 2,100-acre [849-ha] grounds of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit. The monastery grounds are bordered by and connected to a state park and the network of footpaths, creeks, and wildlife corridors of the park and encompassing 8,000-acre [2,327-ha] Arabia Mountain Heritage Area. This is a huge strength for a final resting place, since many people already feel connected to this land.

Site of old clearcut at Honey Creek Woodlands

Old clearcut site being regenerated with new growth and green burials

First and foremost, the burial grounds are a nature preserve, with the goal of enhancing a 50-year succession back to a mixed hardwood forest, through such practices as selective weeding of invasive exotics, seeding and planting native plant stock, and adding organic matter to the soil.

Bodies are planted just 3 to 3.5 feet [0.9 to 1.06 m] deep because microbial activity and soil life drops tremendously at depths greater than 4 feet [1.21 m]. Above the body the excavated soil is placed in a mound with the topsoil placed back on top for a total initial “depth” of about 5 feet [1.5 m]. This is then covered with a light pine needle mulch and native wildflower seed. The Georgia Native Plant Society ensures only natives are used. Flowers and butterflies soon cover the 2-foot [0.6-m] tall burial mound – over 64 species of butterflies were counted in one day in 2008. The mound settles completely after a few years.

Day-old green burial

Older, settled burial mound

The process is so visible! So beautiful! I visited a day-old burial; fresh flowers still atop the grave. 10 feet [3 m] away, dried and shriveled flowers rested atop a week-old burial. And as I looked about I saw I was surrounded by burials, all in various stages of settling and regeneration. The older they were, the greater the density of vegetation atop them, and the more level the soil.

I saw a family cremation plot circle of field stones surrounding a tree. All were again reunited and rooted around their family’s tree.

I felt revived just being in this regenerating forest. I felt…

Alive!

Death. Pesticide-ridden lawn above, formaldehyde-pumped bodies below within conventional cemetery.

Life. Green burial with mature forest at Honey Creek Woodlands.

REFERENCES:

1. Harris, Mark. Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial. Scribner, 2007. pp. 40, 41.

2. Harris, Mark. Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial. Scribner, 2007. pp. 40, 56.

3. Harris, Mark. Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial. Scribner, 2007. pp. 30, 39.

4. Harris, Mark. Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial. Scribner, 2007. p. 38.

5. Harris, Mark. Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial. Scribner, 2007. p. 61.

For more information about the legalities of green burials in your region, see the book Caring for the Dead: A Complete Guide for Those Making Funeral Arrangements with or without a Funeral Director by Lisa Carlson, mentioned above.

For Tucson- and/or Arizona-specific resources:

- Visit www.azgreenburial.com;

- Download AZ Green Burial FAQs, courtesy of Kristine Bentz;

- Read Kristine’s blog (which includes info on a May 2010 workshop in Prescott);

- Check out and consider joining a Tucson-based MeetUp group Kristine started which is dedicated to alternatives for death care;

- Contact Kristine by email.

Shelter for ceremonies and gatherings at Honey Creek Woodland

© 2009 Brad Lancaster, www.HarvestingRainwater.com

Many garden hoses leach lead and other chemicals into the water as it sits in the hose. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brass fittings are often the culprits.

Yuck - the water tastes like lead!

To reduce such risk, purchase, use, and/or drink only from hoses labeled safe for drinking water. Never buy any hose with such labeling as “WARNING: This product contains a chemical in the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.” Note that such warnings will typically be in very small print.

A May 2005 Consumer Reports article, “Dare you drink from a garden hose?” reports that hoses labeled safe for drinking leach minuscule concentrations of lead into water standing in the hose, while hoses not labeled drinking water safe leached up to 10 to 100 times allowable lead levels into water standing in the hose.

So, flush any hose before you drink from it by letting the water run a while before you gulp.

Suppliers of hoses labeled safe for drinking water include:

• Gatorhyde Drinking Water Safe Garden Hose: Available in 3/4-inch diameter, but upon inspection I found that it constricts down to 5/8th-inch interior diameter.

• Armadillo Hoses: Available in 5/8-inch diameter, but upon inspection I found that it constricts down to less than 1/2-inch interior diameter – closer to 3/8-inch. For a list of their NSF-51 certified hoses, click here.

Note that these are far better than most, but not perfect. Gatorhyde contains polyurethane, while Armadillo contains a less toxic PVC. Both polyurethane and PVC are banned materials in the Living Building Challenge Materials Red List (Prerequisite Five). The Living Building Challenge is an integrated green building guide that goes well beyond LEED.

Note for anyone using gravity to move water through a hose from a rainbarrel or rainwater tank – get 3/4-inch (best) or 5/8-inch (next best) interior diameter hose instead of 1/2-inch interior diameter. The larger the interior diameter, the less surface friction will reduce your low gravity-fed pressure.

Also make sure your rain barrel or cistern faucet does not constrict its interior diameter to less than 3/4 of an inch. Look inside the valve. Unfortunately, most readily available valves reduce interior diameter to 1/4 of an inch, greatly reducing your gravity-fed pressure.

© 2009 Brad Lancaster, www.HarvestingRainwater.com

All around the world I see water wastefully flowing down urban street curbs and out of concreted storm drains even though it has not rained in months. It is not stormwater I see flowing. It is urban drool. Others call it “nuisance runoff” – water from leaky pipes, driveway car washes, over-watered landscapes, and so on – our waste.  But it can be a resource. It can be harvested.

Urban drool running down concreted channel Tujunga Wash, Los Angeles, California. Photo credit: Brad Lancaster

That is what is happening in Los Angeles, California, along a mile-long stretch of the Tujunga Wash Flood Control Channel between Vanowen Street and Oxnard Avenue. It is bringing myriad forms of life back to this community.

Between 1950 and 1952 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cleared a 9-mile section of the waterway of its vegetation and lined it with concrete in order to drain the water out of the community as quickly as possible. The goal was flood control, but it also dehydrated the watershed and its aquifer, removed the natural water filter, and created a fenced-off sterile blight.

Section of Tujunga Wash and fenced-off upper bank pre-rehabilitation. Photo credit: Brad Lancaster

That is now beginning to be reversed with the Tujunga Wash Greenway and Stream Restoration Project. A stream has been recreated and replanted with native riparian vegetation on the upper banks of the concreted channel. The new stream is fed by water diverted upstream from the channel through a half-mile-long pipe. Much of this water is urban drool, which flows year round. As the water flows through the greenway, it is filtered and cleaned by sand, gravel, and tree roots. Some percolates into the ground (helping recharge the aquifer); the rest is returned to the flood-control channel via another pipe. It teems with life and invites one to step off the wide pedestrian/bicycle path lining the stream to explore and play.

Section of Tujunga Wash and new pedestrian path/corridor post rehabilitation. Photo credit: Brad Lancaster

Much of this life acts as a living seed-bank for indigenous plants, whose seed can help revegetate both downstream areas as water and seed flow downstream, and upstream areas as wildlife walks and flies upstream with seed in tow.

As this life resides on the upper banks it is unlikely to be washed out in big floods. The floods will scour down the concreted channel, leaving the life in its protective upper bank eddy to replant what is scoured – and to germinate still more life not yet seen.

Playing in section of Tujunga Wash rehabilitated upper bank stream. Photo credit: Brad Lancaster

It is a small step. A beginning. An invitation to revalue and rehabilitate our waterways so they once again are regenerative corridors of water, pedestrians, and wildlife.

For more on this dynamic project see:
http://www.coastandocean.org/coast_v23_no4_2007-08/articles/tujunga_01.htm

and
http://ladpw.org/apps/news/pdf/2380_2618.pdf

For more ideas, strategies, and stories on how to harvest urban drool and rainwater runoff to generate more life higher in the watershed of our built environments see:
-    Street Orchards for Community Security
-    Parking Lot to Parking Orchard
-    Farming in the City with Runoff from a Street
and
-    Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 2: Water-Harvesting Earthworks

And thank you to David O’Donnell of TreePeople for guiding me to this project and its resources.