Rainwater Harvesting at the Railyard in Santa Fe, NM

4 Comments

Comment by Afriendof B on March 27, 2008 at 6:26pm

Excellent!!! This links so brilliantly with the discussion on water. (One of my frustrations with this format is that there is so much related information out there that doesn't ever link up. I'm not tech savvy enough to have a solution, but I wish it would.) As a child of the desert I have always been obsessed with water and water conservation/storage. Even here in moderately rainy Ohio it is a resource that is really under utilized. Mostly we worry about how to deal with it when we have too much. Then in a couple of months we are crying because it hasn't rained for 6 weeks and everything is dying. Personally, we are working on plans for rain catchment cisterns and ponds for our house and farm. The goal is to be completely water independent, without using a well or damming a stream. We are a few years away due to time and money, but we will get there. It is great to see this on a larger scale. I designed and built a system at Grailville that held 9000 gallons of water, a fraction of what could have been collected from the various rooftops, to be used for garden irrigation. That would take the most intensive acre of gardens through a 6 week drought without a problem. We need more of theses systems. I hope the project in NM gets produced and published.

Comment by Jeffrey V. on March 28, 2008 at 9:31am

Our average yearly rainfall in Santa Fe: 14 inches

Rain barrels are an inexpensive way to supplement short term but you can't store much in them. It really takes a cistern of some size to see a long term impact.

Comment by Afriendof B on March 28, 2008 at 10:23am

You are right. I think it depends a lot on what you are using the water for and how much space you have for storage. If I lived in a 14 inch precip zone I wouldn't be planting any lawn. They suck up too much water. You can still create beautiful parks and landscapes that look lush and use a lot less water. The other thing that can be done to stretch your water resources is a gray water system and a shallow leach field for your black water. I know of leach field systems installed about a foot under ground that water the lawn beautifully and pose no environmental hazard.

Comment by Melissa MoonGoddess on March 28, 2008 at 10:11pm

My only concern about railyard rain catchment is the high amount of herbicides that are used on rail right-of-ways, and likely as much in a rail yard. Up here, in Vermont, I usually don't wildcraft anything within three metres of rail tracks for this very reason.

Ok... just re-read your post... this is a redeveloped rail yard, so hopefully the grounds have been tested and any residual contamination has been mitigated.

Having said that, rainwater harvesting systems like this are to be lauded, especially in the southwest of the U.S. In these areas where rain is highly seasonal the more than can be done to hold, and utilize the high amounts that tend to come, all at once, the better.

I think I mentioned once in our Water! discussion that every home in Bermuda is responsible for collecting and maintaining their own water catchment systems. At least, that's the way it was when I was there... uh... over 30 years ago. It very well may have changed since then. But, every home had carefully whitewashed roofs, gutters and underground cisterns.... and in the Southwest... with an abundance of sun, I can't see whey everyone wouldn't have solar hot water, too. On the island of Cyprus, in the Mediterranean, you see solar hot water collectors and tanks atop just about every home.

And Afriendof B's leach field/lawn watering idea is marvelous! Of course, that is if you wish to have grass. Me... if I owned a home... that had grass... I'd turn it all into permaculture gardens.

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