Tag: toilets

Rainwater Toilets Caught in Red Tape

  • Jill Stites shows off a cistern that collects water from the roof of a welcome center for the Lake County Forest Preserve District of Illinois. An underground cistern collects water for fire protection and, come summer, toilets.(Photo courtesy of Shawn Allee)

Sometimes we hear complaints that environmental regulations stop us from doing what we want with our property.
Environmentalists say there’s one issue where doing the green thing can attract a bunch of red tape.
Shawn Allee reports it’s about using rain water to flush our toilets.

Transcript

Sometimes we hear complaints that environmental regulations stop us from doing what we want with our property.
Environmentalists say there’s one issue where doing the green thing can attract a bunch of red tape.

Shawn Allee reports it’s about using rain water to flush our toilets.

This story starts at a forest preserve in Lake County, Illinois, north of Chicago.

Jill Stites is here to show off the forest preserve’s custom-built welcome center.

Stites: This building was built for people to come out and see what people could do in their own homes.

In other words, the idea was, we could do it, it didn’t break the bank entirely, here’s something you might want to try, that sort of thing?
Stites: yes, you can really do green building in a responsible way.

Stites shows me how the building collects rain water from the roof.
That keeps rain out of sewers.
That way, the local waste-water treatment plant doesn’t waste chemicals and electricity to purify rainwater.
After all, rainwater’s already clean and you can store it in cisterns, like this one.

Stites: It collects water off of the roof and goes directly in there. and there’s a spout on the bottom of the cistern that you can hook up a hose to and water your flowers with.

But Stites’ building wanted bigger bragging rights.
They wanted to prove people can collect rain water for more than just flowers.
You can use it for something more urgent: flushing your toilet.

Stites: you don’t need drinking water to flush your toilet. you’re saving the water from going to the storm sewers to be treated to come back as drinking water when that’s not necessary.

There was trouble, though.
The forest preserve district couldn’t get a permit to use rain water in the toilets.

It wanted a connection to city water, as a kind of backup.

But the state worried untreated rain water might somehow contaminate the city’s drinking water.

It took years to get special permission.

Stites: We’re bragging about it. It’s been in the paper about the possibility of it happening and we’re hoping by summer that it’s going to be a fact.

Well, the Lake County Forest Preserve District got its permit, but it won’t let the issue die.
It wants average homeowners to have an easier time, so do environmental groups.

Ellis: It’s a time-consuming process. If we’re going to have more individuals and business doing this, it’s just going to become a bureacratice mess if they have to get variances every time.

This is Josh Ellis.
He’s with the Metropolitan Planning Council in Chicago.
He wants rain collection for toilets to go mainstream in Illinois, but state law needs an update.

Ellis: It would just be a matter of course instead of a special process just to run your toilets a little bit differently.

He says engineers and plumbers have proven rain water collection can work for toilets, safely.

Ellis: We just need to upgrade the plumbing code and I think it will be smooth sailing from there.

Maybe smooth sailing … if you have the cash.
I ask an industry leader for specifics.
His name’s Joe Wheeler, and he’s with the American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association.
The U-S Environmental Protection Agency estimates, each year the average household spends just 200 dollars on water.
Wheeler says, for a rain water collection system …

Wheeler: You could do a really good job for about 4500 to 15,000 dollars. Every house is different. We’re not talking McDonald’s Big Macs here, we’re talking every one of them is a unique situation.

Wheeler says overseas, using rainwater for toilets is common and cheap.
Take Germany, for example.

Wheeler: Basically when you go into a home, you don’t know … you can’t tell the difference.

But Wheeler says German homes and businesses get pushed toward rain harvesting.

Wheeler: People would actually get a rebate on their waste water and that gave the whole market in Germany a critical mass.

It doesn’t work like that here, so in the U-S, rain harvesting for toilets is nowhere near critical mass.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Bottle Hunters Clash With Archaeologists

  • Though archaeologists may disagree, diggers Fortemeyer and Jordan say it’s better to dig quickly – maybe even sloppily – then to not dig at all.(Photo courtesy of Samara Freemark)

Archaeologists are not happy with bottle hunters. Bottle hunters spend their free time digging up outdoor privies – or, 19th century toilets. They’re looking for old glass bottles. But as Samara Freemark reports, they’re catching flak from the professionals.

Transcript

Archaeologists are not happy with bottle hunters. Bottle hunters spend their free time digging up outdoor privies – or, 19th century toilets. They’re looking for old glass bottles. But as Samara Freemark reports, they’re catching flak from the professionals.

If you ever went looking for buried treasure when you were a kid, maybe you can begin to understand just how crazy people can get about digging up bottles.

Take Jack Fortemeyer. When I met him, he was neck-deep in a hole in a backyard in Brooklyn. He was shoveling out a 19th century privy with his partner Scott Jordan. Not so bad for a 70 year old man.

“I told the kids you guys are going to have to do the digging while I sit up on the top in a wheelchair and you’re going to pass me the bottles and so forth. I’m getting to that point.”

Fortemeyer is a bottle digger – a person who digs up backyard privy pits looking for old bottles. The ones they find, they clean and keep. Or they sell them, or trade them with other collectors. Fortemeyer says he’s been hooked for decades.

“Found some bottles, had to find out about them, bought a book, and now I’m hopelessly addicted to it.”

Fortemeyer used to live in suburban Long Island. But he moved to Brooklyn because the buildings here are older. Older buildings mean privy pits – And privy pits… mean bottles.

“That’s why I moved to the neighborhood. To be closer to my pits. To be….I mean, that’s what it’s all about.”

“Jack, I see something….there’s a bottle there…”

So far today Fortemeyer and Jordan have dug up a nice collection of 19th century artifacts. Jordan spreads the pieces they like on a table.

“There’s a tiny piece of black pottery with floral design. a fragment of an 1840s teapot. A brass shirt button, little tiny stars going around the edge.”

He’s in the middle of describing them to me when I trip and step on a shard of pottery that’s been tossed on the ground.

“I think I….don’t worry about that. I think I just stepped on a plate and broke it.
Just more work for me. If we’re laying it on the ground, it’s not that important.”

What is it? Part of a white plate. So typical a lot of it doesn’t get kept.

And that moment right there is maybe the perfect example of why bottle diggers drive some professional archaeologists completely up the wall.

“It just makes us crazy. The bottle hunter, it’s all for them.”

That’s Joan Geisamar. She’s a member of the Professional Archaeologists of New York City – or the P-A-N-Y-C and yes, that acronym is pronounced ‘panic’.

“I have to confess the acronym came before the name, because we’re always in a panic about what’s going on.”

Geisamar says bottle diggers destroy the archaeological record. Professionals dig slowly. Painstakingly. They catalog every fragment, no matter how unglamorous. Diggers, she says, just barge in with shovels, looking for pretty things.

“They take what they want and throw everything else back in. It’s just a record that’s completely lost for personal gain and selfishness. Once it’s lost, it’s lost. And it’s
just morally wrong and professionally wrong.”

But Scott Jordan says in a place like New York, where there’s always development going on, it’s better to dig quickly – maybe even sloppily – then to not dig at all.

“There’s enough being destroyed left and right that we can’t even keep up with it
ourselves. There are so many sites, especially during the building boom in New
York where entire blocks are lost. If we’re there it’s gonna be thrown in a dump truck, put in a landfill. So those artifacts will just be lost.”

He pointed at the schoolyard next door. The playground had been slated for redevelopment. The diggers wanted to get in there. They offered to do presentations at the school, show the kids what they found. Everyone was interested. But jumping through all the official hoops took too long, and in the end, the yard was bulldozed and the site was lost.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

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No Paperless Office Yet

  • For five years, the environmentalist group Greenpeace held protests against the Kimberly Clark Corporation, maker of Kleenex tissues, for cutting Canada’s Boreal Forest and other forests around the world for its products. (Photo source: Wikimedia Commons)

When the computer-age took
off in the 1990s, lots of
people thought we’d use a
lot less paper. But that
hasn’t happened. Julie Grant
reports on why environmentalists
are so concerned about all
the paper we’re still using
in our offices and homes:

Transcript

When the computer-age took
off in the 1990s, lots of
people thought we’d use a
lot less paper. But that
hasn’t happened. Julie Grant
reports on why environmentalists
are so concerned about all
the paper we’re still using
in our offices and homes:

Allen Hershkowitz knew that the computer revolution wasn’t going to lead to a paper-less society. He’s been a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the NRDC, since people first started using email.

“Very early on, even at NRDC, we started to see people printing out documents that would otherwise have been retyped or emails that shouldn’t have been printed out.”

Hershkowitz says Americans use 7-times more paper than the average person on the planet. And computer printouts are just the beginning. Packaging, cigarettes, tissues and toilet paper – Hershkowitz has seen firsthand the devastation the demand for all that paper it’s causing.

“Ancient forests, forests that have existed way before Christ and Moses and Mohammed, for 10,000 years, are being cut down for toilet paper. A product we use for 2-3 seconds. This does not make sense.”

Hershkowitz says this deforestation causes more global warming pollution than all the trucks, buses, planes and ships in the world combined. He scoffs at products like 3-ply toilet paper, and compares using them to driving a gas-guzzling Hummer.

In Europe and Asia, much more of the toilet paper is made from recycled paper. Americans get beat up in the international press for allowing their delicate buttocks to devastate the world’s forests.

For five years, the environmentalist group Greenpeace held protests against the Kimberly Clark Corporation, maker of Kleenex tissues, for cutting Canada’s Boreal Forest and other forests around the world for its products. Greenpeace’s campaign against Kimberly Clark took late night political comedian Stephen Colbert by surprise.

Colbert: “Now for starters, who knew toilet paper came from trees? I always assumed it came from cartoon bears.”

Greenpeace recently ended their protests. Kimberly Clark agreed that by next year 40% of the fiber in their tissue products would come from recycled paper. But while environmentalists support this concession, it does not please Mr. Colbert.

Colbert: “Have you seen recycled toilet paper? Environmentalists, I swear, if you take away my plush toilet paper, I’m just going to use the next softest thing – spotted owls.”

Most paper makers aren’t opposed to using recycled material in their products. Dan Sandoval is an editor at the publication Recycling Today. He says most cardboard boxes and newspapers are already made from recycled paper.

And that recycled toilet tissue? He says that’s usually made from old office paper. The stuff we use for printing and writing. But a lot of times office waste is all thrown together – and isn’t clean enough to be recycled into something new.

“You know, when you’re collecting it all together here, you’re going to get some telephone books, some post-it notes and things like that that people are throwing together. Plastic windowed envelopes. Some of that stuff is like, it’s kind of iffy on that. So you get more material, but the quality goes down.”

Sandoval says that means the paper mills have to invest in a lot more cleaning equipment. And some times it costs more than just cutting down trees. Still, he says the trend for companies around the world is toward more recycled content. Environmentalists want paper companies to move faster.

And they say consumers also need to do their part. In the office, they want people to print less, and at home, they’re asking people to stop buying toilet paper that’s 3 layers thick.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Footloose and Diaper-Free

  • Diaper-free parents say that their baby shows them signs when a bathroom break is needed. They call the dialogue "elimination communication." (Photo by Jessi Ziegler)

When most Americans have a baby,
the parents decide whether to use
disposable or cloth diapers. But
Julie Grant reports that there’s
another trend: no diapers at all:

Transcript

When most Americans have a baby,
the parents decide whether to use
disposable or cloth diapers. But
Julie Grant reports that there’s
another trend: no diapers at all:

Having kids without diapers might seem kind of far out. So,
who better to tell us about this then Willow Lune, of
Berkeley, California.

She remembers when her son was 3-months old. They
were at her mother-in-law’s house. Her husband took the
baby to the bathroom – and accidentally left the door open.

“And his mother came in and saw him holding our son over
the toilet. And she said, ‘what are you doing?’ And my
husband said, ‘well, he’s going to the bathroom, just like you
do.’ And it took her about a minute, and she said, ‘that’s so
cool.’”

Lune and her husband said it was normal to see babies
without diapers when they were traveling in Tibet and
Thailand. So, when their son was born, they decided to try
it. He’s was going to the toilet on his own by age 1 and a
half.

Now Lune teaches classes in Berkeley and other areas
around San Francisco.

She says diaper-free little ones can wear crotch-less pants –
or might not wear anything from the waist down.

And it’s up to the parents to pay close attention – or risk
having to reach for the cleaning supplies.

“There might be a little wiggle, or sometimes just the staring
at you. There’s just little subtle clues that they actually give
you from the time they’re born. So it’s our job to look at that,
listen for that, pick up on that. And then respond to it.”

Turns out, there’s a name for this little dialogue between
babies and parents. They call it elimination communication,
or E.C. Instead of using diapers – and then training them to
go in the toilet a few years later – Lune says parents can just
pay attention. They can show babies from the start what to
do when the need arises.

Lune says one of the reasons she and her husband do this
is because they are concerned for the environment.

Pampers and Huggies clog up the landfills. The other major
option – washing cloth diapers – takes more attention from
parents. But doing that can use a lot of water and electricity.

Jennifer Williams lives in the San Francisco area. She has
three children – all under age four.

Williams is also concerned for the environment. And she
wants to pay close attention when her 6-month old daughter
goes to the bathroom. She even uses cloth diapers.

“Even just with cloth diapers, you have to be way more in
tune to what’s going on with someone’s body. Where –
she’s in disposable right now – I’ll just forget about it for five
hours. You don’t have that option with cloth. Unless you
want to give her a horrible a rash. So, the whole EC thing is
really interesting, because you really have to be in touch with
what’s going on physiologically.”

But Williams works full time. Elimination communication just
is not practical for her family.

“Yeah, I mean, because you really do have to be available to
whenever the baby has to go to the bathroom. With one
baby, when I was home on maternity leave, I probably could
have done it. Once you have more than one running
around, it just doesn’t fit. Maybe I’m lazy. So be it.”

Supporters of the diaper-free lifestyle say it’s actually easier
then potty training kids when they’re older. And they say
parents don’t have to do it all the time. They can try it when
they do have time to pay close attention.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Greenovation: Low-Flow Toilets

  • Rudy Wilfong, on the left, distributes Coroma toilets. Matt Grocoff, right, is with Greenovation TV. (Photo by Thore Bergman)

The Environmental Protection Agency has
a new water saving program called Water
Sense. It’s similar to the Energy Star label
for electronics. To get the Water Sense
program’s endorsement, toilets must use less
water. But, people have been complaining
about the old style low-flow toilets since they
were first required in the mid-1990s. Lester
Graham reports on what’s changed since then:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency has
a new water saving program called Water
Sense. It’s similar to the Energy Star label
for electronics. To get the Water Sense
program’s endorsement, toilets must use less
water. But, people have been complaining
about the old style low-flow toilets since they
were first required in the mid-1990s. Lester
Graham reports on what’s changed since then:

The problem with those old low-flow toilets is the companies didn’t really re-design them – they just made the tank smaller. Some of them just didn’t do the job.

Hugh Maquire has one in his home. He’s had a bad experience with his.

Maquire: “I had to flush my low-flow toilet six or seven times. What is that saving you?”

Graham: “ Doesn’t save you much water that way does it?”

Maquire Doesn’t save you much water at all. Plus it’s annoying. It’s embarrassing, ‘cause everybody’s hearing you flush the toilet six or seven times, wondering what the heck’s going on in there.”

So, we asked Matt Grocoff with Greenovation TV to set up a demonstration for us. Behind the Bgreen Retail Store in Ann Arbor, Michigan three different models of these new Water Sense low flow toilets are set up on five-gallon buckets so we can see what gets flushed… and what comes out.

Grocoff: “I always joke there were three things that set back the environmental movement: there was the original low-flow shower head, the original low-flush toilet and Jimmy Carter’s sweater. ‘Cause what that said to everybody was ‘You’re going to pay more for it; it was going to be less comfortable and you were going to have to sacrifice and it wasn’t going to perform as well.’ And with these new generations of redesigned toilets, you’re getting a higher quality product than even the existing one-point-six gallon or even a three gallon per flush toilet”

Graham: “Let’s see it.”

These toilets all have dual flush capabilities. A full flush is 1.28 gallons. A half flush – just 0.8. To prove how well they work, he’s just using the point-eight gallon flush. Matt’s got tennis balls, potatoes, and little rubber duckies.

Grocoff: “We got three duckies.” (flush sound)

Graham: “ Well, that seemed to work. No duckies. What’d you think of that, Hugh?”

Maquire: “I felt sorry for that ducky, but it was a great demonstration.”

And, again, that was the half-flush at 0.8 gallons, half of what the old low-flow standard was. Matt upped the ante.

Grocoff: “Two tennis balls and two potatoes. This is going to be the real challenge.” (flush sound)

Then more potatoes.
(flush)

And more duckies.
(flush)

Now, Matt’s demonstration is hardly scientific, but of the three brands we tested – a Kohler, a Toto and a Coroma – it appeared to me the Coroma worked best, at flushing duckies and potatoes anyway.

Rudy Wilfong is a dealer for Coroma. The toilet is made in Australia. He says Australia has had one-gallon-per-flush restrictions for 30 years, so they’ve designed them to work.

Wilfong: “And they don’t plug. They flush better than the 1.6 gallon toilets with half the water.”

And compared to the old low-flow toilets, you can expect to save about 1,000 gallons, per person, per year. They do cost more, but the pay back compared to a regular low-flow is about 2 to 2.5 years. If you’ve got one of those three-gallon-per-flush models, or even an old 6 gallon model, your payback will be a lot faster.

Graham: “Alright, Matt, I’m going to give you one more chance to impress me. What have you got here?”

Grocoff: “Alright. So, here we’ve got a full t-shirt. (flush) Very nice.”

Maquire: “Hey, Matt. I had a black t-shirt. Do you see it anywhere?” (laugh)

Graham: “Well, this was pretty impressive. Where can I get some more information about this?”

Grocoff: “Of course, you can go to Greenovation-dot-TV and you can see a video and some photographs of some of these toilets.”

Graham: “ Alright. Matt Grocoff of Greenovation-dot-TV. Thanks very much.”

Grocoff: “Alright. Thanks, Lester.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Illegal Drugs in Wastewater

  • A one day snapshot of wastewater from 96 cities and towns in Oregon shows that meth was found in many samples - not just larger urban areas (Photo courtesy of the journal Addiction)

A new report tracks illegal drug use by looking at wastewater. Rebecca Williams has more:

Transcript

A new report tracks illegal drug use by looking at wastewater. Rebecca Williams has more:

A lot of studies have found prescription drugs people take end up in wastewater, and now researchers are also tracking illegal drugs that way.

Caleb Banta-Green is the lead author of the report in the journal Addiction.

He studied a one day snapshot of wastewater from 96 cities and towns in Oregon.

He says cocaine and ecstasy were much more likely to be used in larger urban areas. But they found meth everywhere, even after a crackdown to make it harder to get the ingredients to make it.

“That sort of appetite or interest for methamphetamine has been built up in those rural areas and it looks like that use is continuing and it’s also being found in urban areas.”

He says it’s not clear if trace amounts of these drugs might eventually end up in drinking water. But previous studies indicate other kinds of legal drugs can be detected in sources of drinking water.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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New Heights for Water Recycling

  • Koichi Wakata (left), space station commander Gennady Padalka (center), and Michael Barratt (right) take ceremonial sips of recycled urine in a key milestone for the lab complex. (Photo courtesy of NASA TV)

NASA has technology light years ahead of what’s available to the rest of us. Advanced water recycling is
one of them. For years, astronauts have collected and recycled sweat and even water vapor. Shawn Allee
looks at NASA’s latest water recycling technology and whether anything like it is already on Planet Earth:

Transcript

NASA has technology light years ahead of what’s available to the rest of us. Advanced water recycling is
one of them. For years, astronauts have collected and recycled sweat and even water vapor. Shawn Allee
looks at NASA’s latest water recycling technology and whether anything like it is already on Planet Earth:

A press conference between NASA headquarters and the International Space Station got some attention
recently.

It was about making drinkable water from astronauts’ urine.

Headquarters: “The Expedition 19 crew inaugurating the use of the water recovery system to
produce recycled, purified water.”

NASA figures sending water into space wastes rocket fuel.

Why pay good money, if you can just reuse water that comes out of astronauts’ bodies?

Astronauts have recycled other fluid, but urine was kinda the final frontier.

Astronaut: “Everybody’s talked about recycling water in a closed-loop system, but nobody’s ever
done it before. So, we’re going to be drinking yesterday’s coffee frequently up here, and happy to do
it.”

Three astronauts hold up their drink pouches.

Astronaut: “And, here we go. Here’s to everybody who made this happen.”

Group: “Cheers.” (laughter)

Headquarters: “That’s looks really, really good from down here. Um…”

For all the jokes cracked in space, water’s a serious problem down here on Earth.

Is anyone recycling urine like they are on the space station? Depends on how you cut it.

NASA’s system is a closed loop: water out, urine in, water out.

Similar technology’s used during some natural disasters, and the country of Singapore gets close.
Singapore recycles sewage water but it’s sent to reservoirs where it’s diluted.

How far does America get with recycled water? Public service announcements hint at who’s furthest
along.

“Southern California is getting drier. Go to bewaterwise.com. Find out how your community is
dealing with mandatory conservation.”

For decades, California utilities have used recycled waste water to spruce up landscaping and golf courses –
but you’re not allowed to drink it.

Orange County goes a tad further. It replenishes an underground aquifer with recycled water. The utility
draws water out of that aquifer.

So, it’s a kind of water recycling – more like Singapore’s diluted variety than NASA’s fully-closed loop.

According to the federal Environmental Protection Agency – no city in America has astronaut-style water
recycling.

But, some water utility managers predict some city will.

“It’s a non-issue. From purely a perception standpoint, Oh my god you’re making
me drink toilet water. You know, get over it, because you’ve been doing it anyhow.”

That’s Frank Jaeger. He runs the water system in Parker, a Denver suburb.

He says most water systems are more like Singapore’s and Orange County’s than you might think.

“I was in New Orleans, and I had the chance to go through their treatment process. And, they
pointed out that ten years in a row they had won the drinking water award for turbidity, taste, odor –
and that water going down the Mississippi had been through 12 stomachs by the time it had gotten to
New Orleans. They mix it with a little more scotch than we do, but they drink it.”

Jaeger says, think of the advantages a full water recycling system would have.

Some cities would save energy since they’d pump water shorter distances. And you’d get a consistent
supply of water, since you can count on people bathing and flushing on a regular basis.

“It is silly, in this day and age, to be worried about these sorts of things – especially
here in the United States, where we have such good wonderful treatment
processes.”

There’s no federal regulation that specifically prohibits full toilet-to-tap water recycling.
So, Jaeger says, someday, some politically brave local government will move forward.

Just not his.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Big City Recycles Rain Water

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.

Related Links

Intimate Disclosure

Warm weather means sprinklers, car washings, and
jumbo plastic pools. In the Great Lakes region, where water is
virtually everywhere, we sometimes need to be reminded that water is a
precious resource. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator, Julia
King, can think of at least one way to conserve – but technology is
thwarting her effort: