All posts by RainBankAdmin

Potable, Rainwater Catchment, Sustainability

Community Rainwater Harvesting

Community rainwater harvestingBhagwati Agrawal has been named a 2015 Top 10 CNN Hero. Voting for CNN Hero of the Year takes place through Sunday, November 15. All of this year’s Top 10 CNN Heroes will be honored during, “CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute,” Sunday, December 6, on the global networks on CNN.

When he lost his corporate job, Mr. Agrawal decided he wanted to focus his energy on creating a solution to his homeland’s drinking water crisis. Fresh water was so scarce in his community, it needed to be trucked in.

Click to watch a video showing  how his non profit organization, Sustainable Innovations, built a community rainwater harvesting system which captures rain from rooftops during India’s monsoon season, providing safe, clean drinking water to six villages with more than 10,000 people in India’s driest area.

“In many parts of the world, you never think of water. In other parts, you think of water day and night,” said Agrawal, 70. “My mission is to end water scarcity, not only in India, but globally.”

The rainwater collection system is called Aakash Ganga — Hindi for “River from the Sky” – and consists of a network of rooftops, gutters, pipes and underground reservoirs that collect and store monsoon rains, which fall from July to September. By saving this rainwater, 6 villages have potable water all year long.

Read more at CNN

Environment, Rainwater Catchment

Welcome to Washington’s Rainy Season

Seattle Downtown After RainOctober 1 is the official start of the rainy season in Washington State and even though annual rainfall met expectations, another dry, warm winter is predicted for the region. This means that the snowpack – the summer rain bank (see what I did there?) will be missing in action for another year.

According to the Department of Ecology’s drought page, “despite recent rains and some boost for stream flows, extreme drought still covers two-thirds of Washington state.”

Now would be a good time to come up with a personal drought contingency plan, since Mother Nature isn’t going to provide relief any time soon. Washington state’s drought plan, released in 1992, refers to fish and timber harvesting, but makes no mention of rain harvesting.

When planning a rainwater collection system, you must account for the amount and intensity of the average rainfall in your area. That information is usually available at the county level, but can also be captured via National Oceanographic and Atmospheric, Administration (NOAA) and the National Climatic Data Center.

For a small system, you can head to your local hardware store, purchase a rain barrel, hook it up and, at the very least, can collect water for your garden.

For a whole house, or commercial system, work with a pro that knows how to design and install the most thoughtful system, which is customized to your specific needs. Ask questions; provide information about your roof size and materials, family size, whether you want to capture water for drinking, irrigation or laundry, etc.

When you work with an accredited professional rainwater harvesting installer and designer, the outcome will be a system to meet your water needs for years to come – and it will add value to your home or business.

Infrastructure, Rainwater Catchment, Sustainability

Aging Public Water Systems Money Sits Unspent

tap-357252_1280Water is vital to public health, maintaining our environment and preservation of quality of life. We simply can’t live without water. Our nation’s public water system infrastructure is in dire need of upgrading. Many systems are so old that the maintenance costs are beginning to overtake the cost of replacement.

The EPA offers funding for low interest loans to public water systems. According to a Washington Times article, ‘The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency projects it will cost $384 billion over 20 years just to maintain the nation’s existing drinking water infrastructure. Replacing pipes, treatment plants and other infrastructure, as well as expanding drinking water systems to handle population growth, could cost as much as $1 trillion.”

Furthermore, the article goes on to note that in spite of demand, more than $1 billion sits, unspent, in a funding pool managed by the largest federal aid program for drinking water improvements, the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, (as reported after a review by The Associated Press).

Why would available funding to improve public water systems, necessary for public health and a strong economy, be left sitting in government accounts? According to CNBC, “Project delays, poor management by some states and structural problems have contributed to nearly $1.1 billion in congressional appropriations sitting unspent in Drinking Water State Revolving Fund accounts as of Aug. 1.”

Adding to the muck, the money that is being tapped is largely used for services associated to drinking water, but not infrastructure improvements. The CNBC article goes on to report “About 1 in 5 dollars in recent years has gone to purposes such as paying the salaries of state employees and contractors. Those expenses are allowable but leave less for the repair and replacement of leaky pipes, deteriorating treatment plants and century-old storage tanks.”

So, while funding is available for municipal and county water systems improvement, almost 20 percent of the money drawn from this grant pool is currently being used to pay for administrative costs, leaving less money available for the $1 trillion estimated that will be needed across the board – for just water infrastructure improvements, not inclusive of roads, bridges, energy, etc.

There are many safe and sustainable options available to supplement public water systems with rainwater collection. While available in many areas, we need more education about the value and  stability achieved by adding a rainwater collection system to a residence or commercial property. In some areas, a rainwater collection system could be sole-source for whole house usage, or a supplement to city water, easing the burden on public systems caused by population growth and aging infrastructure.