planning today’s soup
it’s going to rain again
onion or garlic?
I remember standing at the bus stop in the rain when I was a kid in Catholic school, leaning my head back and sticking my tongue out to catch rain drops. It’s a natural, primitive instinct. Kids do it all over the world without being taught. Somewhere along the way, we have suppressed the urge to collect our own water in favor of letting government do it for us. From my home on the Russian River I have watched a gazillion gallons of water flow past my house on the way to the sea, the river’s turbidity revealing the precious topsoil running off with it.
I’ve learned just about everything I know about life from watching the river flow by my window. Learned about not pushing and not holding back, about being yourself, in all your moods. While repeatedly emptying my rain gauge to a rough tally of 66 inches of rainfall this winter, it occurred to me that I should be doing something about catching the rain before it gets to the river.
Just one inch of rain will provide 600 gallons of water off a 1,000 square foot roof. That’s equals 10 wine barrels full, or the average expenditure for a teenager’s shower. I am a member of a small water district of 300-plus homes. We pay the second highest rate for water in Sonoma County. And while I am profoundly grateful for the first world amenity of turning on the tap and having potable water spring forth every time, a miracle of sorts, I want to collect my own water to the extent that I can.
Roughly 40 percent of our household expenditure of water is used for outside irrigation. We all know how parched the landscape becomes in our Mediterranean summer. I want to have water to subsidize this effort with a rain barrel or two. Just like opening a jar of homemade blackberry jam in mid December, I want to turn on the spigot and let February’s water flow onto my flowers and vegetables midsummer, guilt free.
It could be that one reason folks don’t do this more often is because the tanks that have been offered to date are not very appealing to look at. In Healdsburg we are very sensitive to aesthetics. It’s one reason people like to come here. If you Google water catchment tanks, they are patently industrial in the non-trendy sense of the word.
Another issue is space. Where can you sit in your garden without seeing those ugly tanks? They can be buried if this is an issue. In a world where we can see climate change, from drought to flood and back again, the issue of catching water has to be part of a wave of new thought. It has been done forever in countries that don’t have the infrastructure we do, but when reservoirs and rivers run dry, it is time to take matters into our own barrels.
I think all new housing ought to be equipped with a water catchment system installed. Developers who install them could be given incentives, and homebuyers who buy homes with them could get a rebate. We tend to think about collecting water the way we used to think about recycling. I remember explaining the concept of recycling to my mother several decades ago. She said “I can’t be bothered doing that.” And I replied, “Well, I’m doing this for your grandchildren.” Eventually she got on board, and ceased to even think about it.
Water is the oil of the 21st century. It’s about time we started harvesting it in a meaningful way, and stop letting its life giving energy run down the drain.
