Page 10 - the NOISE January 2013

Hello! We live in a desert! You may look out your window and see lawns all over your neighborhood, trees planted up and down the road, shrubs and bushes lining your sidewalks, and you may even enjoy a stroll through a nearby green of a golf course — but you still live in a desert. A desert is an area that has little to no available water and does not have enough water to support lush environments of animals and plants. However, as anyone who lives in Arizona can see, the deserts of the American Southwest can still support complex, and distinct ecosystems. Desert creatures of the American Southwest adapt to their low water environment and therefore can prosper. You would think that we, as aspiring desert creatures, would adapt to our environment. Alas, we try and adapt our environment to our sense of denial about where we live.
So where does Flagstaff get its water? Since its inception, the City of Flagstaff has had a water infrastructure that imports water from areas outside of the city. For most of its histo- ry, Flagstaff’s water has come from the Inner Basin of the San Francisco Peaks, Upper Lake Mary and the Woody Mountain wells. Thanks to modern initiatives, now around 3% of the city’s water comes from a local well source, and the city does reclaim 18% of the City’s total water.
On April 8, 2011 the City of Flagstaff Utili- ties Division introduced a draft of its Water Re- sources Master Plan. This plan would take in- formation from the City’s Water Sustainability Study, looking at the 100-year sustainability of the city’s available water resources. While the City still has a long way to go, making better use of the water resources it has are showing some signs of stability. The Total Gallons per Capita per Day, that is how much water each person uses a day, has decreased significantly from 1990. When it comes to residential wa- ter use — that is how much people are using in their daily lives in their homes — Flagstaff is one of the best in the state with a low 58 gallons per person each day. The average home in the United States uses 69 gallons per person per day, so Flagstaff is almost 10 gallons a day below the national aver- age. Most modern US municipal water con- servation strategies aim for a goal of 45.2 gal- lons per person per day residential usage. So while Flagstaff can be proud that it is better
than the national average there is still a ways to go. The question is how do we get there?
The city government of Flagstaff is still making progress in instituting sustainable changes to the city’s water management strategies. For example, in April of last year, City Council approved a Rainwater Harvest- ing Ordinance. This ordinance provides for new residential commercial projects, indus- trial projects, master-planned communities, and multi-family housing. Building Codes established by this ordinance allow these properties to use low water, desert appropri- ate landscaping, and/or rainwater harvesting system storage tanks to capture rainfall from the roof. Like most cities, the majority of Flag- staff’s water is used on landscaping, and this new rainwater ordinance will help reduce that draw on the water supply. However due to political compromises, this ordinance does not apply to new single family homes. But why should that stop you?
Ultimately moving into an ecologically sane future is going to require shifts in po- litical policy. Flagstaff is fortunate to have a city government that’s already implementing changes and engaging long term strategic thinking. To continue this momentum will require work not only from the politicians, but from the voters, citizens, the people like you. Before you can make informed political decisions on water policies you have to be- come educated on water, and not just the political issues. You need to know how water works, how the hydro-cycle functions, how our current water infrastructure works, and how humans interact with it. Once you know how water works in the ecology you can now begin to envision solutions that take into ac- count the ‘triple bottom line’ of sustainable design: the sociological cost, the economic cost, and the environmental cost. When you under- stand the sustainable design of water systems you can then create clear visions for yourself of the types of new systems you would want to see. Once you know what you want to see you can now articulate that vision to your lo- cal politicians and begin to shift policy.
When properly educated, you will be able to create your own vision of sustainable wa- ter system design and articulate that vision to your local politicians. In the meantime, with study, you will learn some of the visions of
sustainable water system design that others have developed. The City of Flagstaff has al- ready recognized one of these visions, Rain- water Catchment. By harvesting rainwater, for every gallon we harvest from the rain, that is one less gallon pumped from the Inner Basin, Upper Lake Mary and the Woody Mountain.
We live in a desert, how much water can we really get from rain? A 1,000 square foot sur- face will catch 600 gallons of water per inch of rain. Well, is that a lot? Think about it this way, your average home is 2,000 square feet, and Flagstaff receives an average of about 23 inches of rain a year. This means you could collect roughly 34,800 gallons off the aver- age roof. To put it in perspective, if you used low flow water appliances and adjusted your habits accordingly so that you could achieve the goal of 45.2 gallons per person per day, that means with the rainwater captured from the roof of your average home you could sup- port your water needs for 769 days — there are only 365 days in a year. Think about that.
In addition to catching rainwater, from the roof you can also create rain sensitive land- scaping. By the use of features such as berms, swails and infiltration pits you can capture rainwater that falls on your yard and have it, essentially, stored in the ground on your site. When the dry months come, that water will be able to provide a great amount of the water needs for you site. How much? With earthen storage, it’s hard to say exactly how much you will collect, but remember, every gallon of rainwater collected is one less gallon pulled from other sources, plus it’s less brack- ish, and plants will thrive on it.
To catch rainwater does of course require some resources and money to be used on your site. From a standpoint of environmental sanity, however, the resources and money to catch rainwater from rooftops is significantly less in impact and cost than the $200 million it would cost to bring a pipeline from the Red Gap Ranch.
While the new city ordinance regarding rainwater does not apply to existing single family homes, don’t let that stop you from in- vestigating the possibility of doing it yourself. They say the personal is the political, what people do in their own homes can add up to significant political impact! If people started putting rainwater systems in themselves or started asking how the city could invest back
into alternative infrastructure, the city would have to respond.
But without the city’s support, how do you do this yourself? The best advice I can give you is to purchase the book Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond by Brad Lancaster. Living in Tucson, Mr. Lancaster has shown that the 12 inches of annual rainfall in Tucson can support a yard full of trees and plants that provide food, shade, aesthetics and ecologi- cal health. His designs have even been adapt- ed by the City of Tucson into building codes allowing citizens to do it themselves. If they can do it the dry, dry Tucson, you can do it in Flagstaff!
While rainwater catchment is a cornucopia of a life giving resource, it is not the only sus- tainable water saving strategy. Another strate- gy most serious permaculturalists implement is the collection of grey water. Grey water is the water that has been used in the home for domestic purposes — washing dishes and clothes, bathing, showering. However grey water does not include water from the toi- let! Normally grey water is flushed down the drain and sent out to the sewage system.
As Dr. Paolo Soleri, designer of the Arco- santi Project says in his book Arcosanti: An Urban Laboratory, “Water is used and not consumed, we plan to use the same water in three successive steps: domestically, aes- thetically and agriculturally.” As Dr. Soleri is trying to tell us, water from the home can be used for multiple purposes. With grey water systems, the water from your sink or tub is cleaned and sent directly into the yard for ir- rigation purposes. Imagine that your laundry water can then be used to safely grow vegeta- bles and plants and to make your yard useful and beautiful.
Once you have learned, you will realize that grey water systems are relatively easy to install. Grey water systems use landscap- ing techniques and plants, such as reeds and ferns, to clean water. When designed correctly, they don’t smell, they don’t produce insects, they appear as just a garden in the landscape. What’s even more enjoyable about grey wa- ter systems is that they “plug” your domestic water habits into your landscaping. In other words, to water your trees you just need to do your dishes, to water your garden you just need to take a bath. Your domestic habits be-
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