Rain barrels are catching on as a simple way to capture water for the
garden. Some people are going even further to save water. They’re piping
rainwater into their indoor plumbing. Ann Dornfeld reports:
Transcript
Rain barrels are catching on as a simple way to capture water for the
garden. Some people are going even further to save water. They’re piping
rainwater into their indoor plumbing. Ann Dornfeld reports:
For years, the rain that fell upon Seattle’s city hall vanished almost as soon
as it hit the roof. It gushed down to the street and washed away oil and
heavy metals left by passing cars. In minutes, the rain became toxic waste
that flowed into the city’s waterways.
These days, Seattle’s new city hall doesn’t let rainwater slip away. This city
hall puts rainwater to work.
(Sound of toilet flushing)
City Councilmember Richard Conlin demonstrates one of the building’s
rainwater-filled toilets. It looks perfectly normal. Conlin says that’s not
always the case:
“It actually does get discolored, particularly during the leaf season, or
when the rains first start in the fall. And so for a while we had notices
in the bathroom saying ‘don’t pay attention to the fact that this water
is discolored. It’s because it’s recycled rainwater.’ But I think people
have really gotten used to it now.”
Rain that doesn’t get absorbed into City Hall’s green roof is channeled to a
million-gallon tank in the basement. It goes through a series of filters, then into the pipes. It’s called a rainwater catchment system.
“Right now we’re using it for pretty much all of the non-potable
functions that we have in City Hall. It’s probably good enough quality
to use for potable functions, but we aren’t going to go there because
we have great water that we get in the city and we’d have to do some
treatment in order to meet legal standards.”
Conlin says the city installed the rainwater system as a way to
practice the conservation that city leaders preach.
Bob Scheulen is a member of the choir. When he and his wife built their
house several years ago, they built a hollow concrete patio that stores
7,000 gallons of rainwater.
Scheulen says despite Seattle’s rainy reputation, droughts are common in
the summer:
“Basically there’s two choices if people want to continue to
use water as the population grows: the city can either build a lot more
reservoirs and drown more land or people can conserve water or be
their own utility for those summer months.”
Scheulen lifts a metal hatch on the patio floor and sticks his head inside:
“I bet we can see how full it is right now. Oh, it’s gettin’ pretty full. It’s
probably 60% full. A couple more
rainstorms and it’ll be probably completely full.”
The family’s washing machine uses rainwater, and they flush their toilets
with it. But Scheulen says what uses the most water is the garden:
“This year we did not run out of water but last year I got a little
overzealous in watering my flowers and I did run out. (Laughs)”
Mike Broili says that kind of awareness is exactly what most Americans are
missing. He runs Living Systems Design, and he installed Bob Scheulen’s
filtration system. Broili says he learned how much water he uses when he
lived in a cabin in Alaska. He hauled his own water for 15 years:
“And when you have to carry your water, you become really
sensitized to how much you’re using and how you use it and where
you use it.”
Broili says you don’t need to live in a rainy climate to run your home on
rainwater:
“There’s enough water that lands on the roofs even in the Southwest
to supply their needs.”
Broili admits the rainwater catchment systems he builds are pricey: 1500 to
15,000 dollars. But he says his clients recognize the value of water:
“Of all of the water on the planet, and this is a water planet, 7/1000ths
of it is actually available for human consumption. That’s a tiny, tiny,
tiny portion.”
Broili says as the population grows, pretty soon the only affordable way to
get water will be from the sky.
For the Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.
