Drought Watch in North Carolina

We've had a fair amount of wet weather lately. In fact, it rained a lot this morning on our excursion to the New Hope Valley Railroad with the kids (a fun trip on an early 20th c. steam engine, if you live near Raleigh).

What we fail to realize is that even with copious amounts of rain, that water conservation in the southeast is critical to our ecosystem. Even more apparent is that the lack of water is eventually going to hit our communities where it hurts the most: in our pocketbooks. A few years ago, Michael Walden, an economist from NC State estimated that every time the state's water supply drops 10%, $50 to $100 million is lost. North Carolina is already cutting funding across the board to meet budget shortfalls. With a potentially severe drought on the horizon, money may not be available to recover.

In this morning's paper, the Army Corps of Engineers reported that inflow to Jordan Lake (the area's water supply reservoir) is about 20% of normal levels for this time of year..... but it has been raining... apparently not enough. We're about 2 inches low from July alone, and about 4-1/2 inches low for the year (roughly 15%). The drought monitor for the state ( http://www.ncdrought.org/ ) shows most of the state as "Abnormally Dry." My guess is that by the end of August into September, we'll be looking at water restrictions and at least "moderate drought" conditions. This change is occurring just a short time after the area was considered in "normal" condition, as recently as 2 weeks ago.

Which brings us to conservation. The good news is that when we look at the numbers over the past three years, water use in Durham and Raleigh has dropped about 10% (Durham: 12%, Raleigh 8%; data from the respective cities and the News & Observer). Water Conservation has become a buzzword among developers and legislators alike. With stormwater regulations becoming more stringent and parcels for development getting smaller, using collected rainwater is quickly becoming a viable and cost-effective measure for low-impact development.

The Town of Apex, a suburb of Raleigh, is getting ready to discuss (and probably approve) a pretty spectacular undertaking which will add about $6 billion to the Town's tax base. Veridea will be a planned mixed-use development of about 1,000 acres. The kicker is that Veridea is being planned "green". If it all comes to fruition, it will be one of the most sustainable developments in the world. My understanding is that it will be environmentally neutral... carbon, water, waste, etc. Neutral. If they can complete this project as planned, it will be an amazing feat... and a necessary one.

We have a long way to go to consider ourselves good stewards of the watersheds in the southeast. Happily, we are making strides toward that goal, and as the water resources become more scarce, we'll have some development in place to use as examples for others coming late to the game. We'll find out more in the coming weeks. There's a public hearing in Apex on August 18. More to come...

Lake Powell Crisis from 2000 to 2005

Lake Powell in Southern Utah is one of the most drastic examples of the water crisis we are having, which will only continue to get worse over time. From 2000 to 2005, the volume of the man-made lake has dropped from 20 million acre-feet (about 6.5 trillion gallons) to 8 million acre-feet (about 2.6 trillion gallons). Thats a 60% drop in volume over the span of the 5-year drought. Over the past few years, Lake Powell has rebounded a bit, but all evidence points to another serious drop in volume when the next major drought hits the Colorado River valley. The video shows the banks of the lake over the 5 year span when the drought was worst.

Tuscon's Rainwater Harvesting Ordinance

The City of Tucson passed a rainwater ordinance (passed 10/2008) requiring rainwater harvesting for new commercial development! It doesn't go into effect until June 2010, but it's a big step for a good sized city.

The ordinance requires new commercial development to get 50% of their landscaping water from rainwater collection. The City website has a rainwater harvesting site with info, resources and a water budget spreadsheet.

The worksheet isn't quite as user friendly as it could be, but the developer has her name and contact information on the spreadsheet, so she's open to suggestions and comments. Kudos to the City of Tucson and Ann Audrey from the Tucson Office of Conservation and Sustainable Development.

http://www.tucsonaz.gov/ocsd/sustainability/water/rainwaterharvesting.php

Colorado's new legislation on rainwater collection

the State of Colorado is finally beginning to give in a little bit regarding the long-standing law banning rainwater collection for private use... The state Senate has approved a bill (09-080) which allows a very specific group of residents to collect rainwater from their own roof with the following conditions...

the collection area must be less than 3,000sf, AND

there is no municipal water supply available, AND

they have, or apply for and receive a well permit.

as long as the intended use doesn't conflict with what is allowed on the well permit.

According to the brief published by the State,

http://water.state.co.us/pubs/pdf/RainWaterBills.pdf

even if you have a valid well permit that restricts your water use to domestic uses, this does not include watering a garden or greenhouse.

This Bill is a good start, but we'll see how much of an effect it has. It's pretty specific, and even their FAQ page makes it sound like they're only budging a little bit.

The webcast went really well. We had about 450 sites registered, with many of the sites holding multiple attendees. I think that the EPA estimated somewhere between 800-900 people! It's exciting to see interest growing so quickly in rainwater collection and water conservation, even though the immediate need due to drought has passed.

Chris Kloss from the Low-Impact Development near D.C. said today that the General Accounting Office found that 29% of municipalities nationwide fail to cover their costs when selling water. The average cost for water is less than $2 per 1,000 gallons. Funny when people buy Aquafina for $1.29 for less than 1 gallon. what a world we live in...

One glimmer of hope... My new neighbors across the street are renovating their house. The county let them know that since the previous owners overbuilt the home past impervious surface limits, that they would be required to retain stormwater on site, even though they weren't adding any hard surfaces. Their response? Rainwater Collection! They just moved here from near Austin, TX, home to a lot of RWH, so I shouldn't bee surprised, but it's great to see!

Rainwater Harvesting Case Studies...

Through a few connections, I have been asked to present a webcast for the EPA on Tuesday as part of their "Managing Wet Weather with Green Infrastructure" series. The webcast will air on Tuesday, March 24 from 1 until 3. There are two other presenters speaking about rainwater collection codes, and general rainwater harvesting. I will be speaking last (I think) and will be talking about a couple of case studies that I have been able to work on over the years. The Legislative Building is one, and two residential systems will also be discussed.

Should be fun!

Rainwater Harvesting in North Carolina...

a couple of years ago I had the opportunity to work with the North Carolina General Assembly to design a rainwater collection system at the NC Legislative Building which takes stormwater runoff from the roof areas (about 100,000 square feet) and use this water to irrigate the plants that are on the grounds, inside and on the roof of the building, where the NC House and Senate meet.
With all of the discussion about the drought we were in, and expect to happen again, I don’t think that we give enough thought to how much water falls on our roofs...
During a 1 inch rainfall (barely enough to wash out a good golf game) more than 60,000 gallons of water flow off the roof of the Legislative Building. Capturing that water not only reduces the amount of water used by the building - it also takes that water out of the already over-taxed Raleigh stormwater system. On top of that, 80% of the cost of water is connected to it’s embodied energy. So rainwater collection doesn’t only conserve water, it also saves energy! How about that.
Granted, Raleigh has a lot of impervious surface, and the Legislative Building is not going to solve the City’s water problems alone, but I think it’s a really important message that the legislators have sent to the community: that water conservation is a huge deal, and we can do something to conserve water. If you want to see a video about the system installed at the Legislative Building, here’s the link:
http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/ncgainfo/cistern/raincatcher.html
It’s not too long, maybe 10 minutes or so.
On a smaller scale, rainbarrels are a great idea for collecting rainwater off of your roof. That water, amazingly, is probably almost as clean as your tap water. The math is the same as the bigger project, just with smaller numbers - a typical suburban house has a “footprint” of about 1,200-1,500 square feet. 1 inch of rain will get you about 600-750 gallons of usable water. In our area, that gets you 30,000 to 35,000 gallons of water each year (maybe a little bit less right now, since our rain levels are pretty low). Check your water bill... not bad, eh?
One of the problems with the economics of rainwater collection is that water rates in many parts of the country are so low, that it makes the simple payback take a long time. Just wait a few years. Globally, water scarcity is and always will be a bigger issue than oil (don’t get me started on oil). When oil runs out in 10-25 years (depending on whether you listen to the pessimists or the optimists) what’s going to happen? Well, you find another source of energy. There’s solar, wind, hydro, nuke, etc. What happens when we run out of water? Hmmm. Only 3% of the World’s water is fresh water. Of that, 78% is trapped in polar ice caps. That leaves less than 0.3% of the Earth’s water that is suitable for consumption.
When water becomes scarce, prices will go way up. Hopefully it won’t take such drastic conditions to get people to start conserving.
We’ll see.
More later...