Rainwater Harvesting Archives - The Water Nexus Blog

Texas Parks and Wildlife Talks Rainwater Collection

Chris Maxwell-Gaines — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 14:45:55 +0000

The Texas Parks & Wildlife Department staff discussed rainwater collection on an episode of their Under The Texas Sky podcast. They talked with special guest Tim Miller of Millberg Farm in Kyle, Texas. He’s a certified organic grower who operates a community supported agriculture program on his 5 acre farm. He has a long history of growing heirloom vegetables and fruit in central Texas.

Tim discussed how he got into collecting rainwater for his farm. He sustains all of his gardens with the rainwater he collects at his farm. Along with active rainwater collection into tanks, he has also designed the land with swales, terraces, small ponds and check dams to help retain water longer after rains.

Tim’s water conservation efforts have not gone unnoticed. He’s been recognized with awards from the Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer Conservation District, as well as the Blue Legacy Award from the State’s Water Conservation Advisory Council as an agriculture producer.

The podcast also visited with two members of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Green Team. Annalise Reichert is a Sustainability Program Specialist in the Support Resources Division, and Christy Seals is a registered architect and the Design Program Manager for the agency’s Infrastructure Division. The Green Team’s mission is to help Texas Parks and Wildlife improve its environmental sustainability efforts. A key part of that process is meeting goals set forth in a sustainability plan that focuses on energy efficiency, water conservation, waste mitigation and recycling.

They discussed the potential opportunities for rainwater collection at the Texas Parks. They mentioned two parks in particular, Cedar Hill State Park near Dallas and Mission Tejas State Park in east Texas. At Cedar Hill, they are implementing passive rainwater collection strategies to mitigate stormwater runoff while at Mission Tejas State Park, they are using rainwater collection for toilet/urinal flushing.

While the rainwater collection system at Mission Tejas helps to conserve water (offsetting the use of municipally treated water), it is also a way to educate the park visitors about what rainwater harvesting can do and allows them to think about applying it at their homes.

Visit the Under the Texas Sky podcast website to listen to the episode or you can download the podcast episode from your favorite podcast provider.

Texas Parks and Wildlife Talks Rainwater Collection is a post from the The Water Nexus Blog produced by Chris Maxwell-Gaines of Innovative Water Solutions LLC.

Survey of Existing Rainwater Harvesting Laws in the United States

Chris Maxwell-Gaines — Wed, 22 Nov 2017 17:10:47 +0000

Have you been thinking about installing a rainwater harvesting system at your house or business but have been confused about the various stories circling the internet about the legality of rainwater harvesting in your state? Well, you have stopped by the right place.

Let’s set the record straight…

While there are many states that have laws and regulations that provide restrictions on the practice of rainwater harvesting, there is NO state that completely outlaws it. Most states allow for the free practice of rainwater harvesting. There are some states that do make it more difficult than other states, but again, there is no state where it illegal.

The video below is a presentation I gave at the American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association (ARCSA) conference on October 17, 2017. It is only a portion of the presentation though. It provides a survey of existing rainwater harvesting laws across the US. It highlights the current regulations in many states and it shows the states that don’t have regulations. It discusses the future developments needed to ensure that rainwater harvesting is allowed in every state in the US. Below the video, you can view the whole powerpoint presentation that I uploaded to SlideShare.

Patchwork Blue – Survey of US RWH Laws – ARCSA Conference – Oct 2017 from Chris Maxwell-Gaines

Download a pdf of the presentation.

I do want to thank Jessica Huntington of Acer Water Tanks for recording this video for me!

Survey of Existing Rainwater Harvesting Laws in the United States is a post from the The Water Nexus Blog produced by Chris Maxwell-Gaines of Innovative Water Solutions LLC.

2017 Texas Legislature: Rainwater System Installer License Bill – HB 173

Chris Maxwell-Gaines — Fri, 17 Mar 2017 01:00:21 +0000

Rainwater harvesting is an essential strategy that will enable the State to meet our future water demands. It provides an immediately available alternative water source at no additional cost to the State. It also raises public awareness of the need for water conservation and promotes active participation by our citizens. Rainwater harvesting systems are very effective stormwater management tools as well that provide flood control and stormwater pollution abatement opportunities.

While the benefits of rainwater harvesting are undeniable, they can only be realized through rainwater harvesting systems that have been constructed by installers that understand the intricacies of rainwater harvesting systems. The main issue then becomes how these systems are implemented in our built environment.

This is the intention of HB 173 which would establish a licensing program for any person or company who receives compensation to install rainwater harvesting systems. This license would promote the professionalism of Rainwater Harvesting System Installers and ensure the safety of the public. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Eddie Lucio III.

What’s at Issue Here?

The issue is that the practice of rainwater harvesting has a perception problem.

What do you think about when you hear “rainwater harvesting”?

You think about this…

While rain barrels do harvest rain and allow anyone to start harvesting rainwater very simply, in reality, rainwater harvesting is so much more.

This is rainwater harvesting…

Rainwater harvesting systems are being relied on to supply drinking water for entire households.

Rainwater harvesting is also this…

These systems are also being relied on to supply the irrigation demand for commercial properties such as schools, municipal buildings, businesses, and office buildings. These systems are very complex and intersect many different segments of the traditional building trades.

Therefore, the need to ensure the public safety with these systems is vital.

While you can see the nice, large cisterns in the pictures above, what you don’t see is the various components that make up the rainwater harvesting system. These components range from gutter systems, downspout piping, collection piping, inlet filtration systems, first-flush diversion systems, water level indication systems, pump systems, internal cistern controls that automate these systems, post-filtration and disinfection systems, and other ancillary components that complete these systems.

HB 173 would ensure that licensed rainwater harvesting system installers would have the required specialized training and experience for the installation of the entire rainwater harvesting system as well as ensure that these professionals continue to learn through required CEUs.

Let’s Clear Up a Few Points Before We Go Further

This bill:

Does NOT prohibit a homeowner from installing his/her own system. I repeat… it does NOT require a homeowner to obtain a license to install a rainwater harvesting system on their own house;
Does not prohibit individuals or companies installing systems under 500 gallons in capacity from charging for their services. Systems of this size or smaller are not practical to be used as a potable water source and are not deemed to be a threat to public health;
Will ensure the safety of the public since rainwater harvesting systems will continue to provide future water supplies for the State of Texas;
Will validate the profession, promote water conservation, and create economic growth in the State of Texas;
Will firmly establish the State of Texas as the leader in promoting rainwater harvesting and water conservation, and;
Will seamlessly transition to professional programs that are already in place.

The Only Water Professional That Doesn’t Require a License?

Rainwater harvesting system installation for compensation is the only water supply trade that does not require a license in the State of Texas. Nearly every other professional that interacts with water in Texas that could come in contact with the public already has a license requirement. Currently, the following water professions in the State of Texas require licenses to render their services for compensation:

Water-well drillers and pump installers
Plumbers
Landscape irrigators
Water system operators
Wastewater treatment plant and collection system operators
On-Site Sewage Facility (septic system) installers
Water treatment specialists
Customer service inspector (inspects for cross connections in water systems)
Backflow prevention assembly testers
Water haulers

Rainwater harvesting system installers currently do not. Since many of these systems are “private water” systems, not covered by other rules concerning water quality, the need for a license to protect public health and safety is essential.

Why is a License Necessary?

In order for the public to be able to rely upon a group of competent practicing professionals, we must have a program that assures appropriate education, testing and evaluation of the licensees. It is critical that our designs are based on sound hydraulic calculations in order for the conveyance and storage systems to properly perform during storm events. It is even more important that proper steps are taken during the filtering and disinfection process to assure the public that a reliable quality of water is produced, suited to their intended use. This end use could be for no more than landscape irrigation or it may be to provide a family with their sole source of water for all purposes, including drinking water. At this point, it’s a matter of public health and safety.
Licensing will assure that installers have appropriate education, training, and expertise to protect public health.
Licensing will also assure dependable systems functioning through the implementation of proper design, installation and maintenance practices.
A rainwater harvesting system installer is responsible for bringing new water sources online each time they place a rainwater harvesting system into service. Individually, these systems are responsible for thousands of gallons being captured, treated and utilized for beneficial uses. Collectively, they are responsible for generating millions of gallons of water each year. The potential for many millions more to be harvested will more readily be realized once the design and installation process is licensed.
Certification of properly designed and installed systems will enable homes to be conventionally financed as financial institutions gain confidence it the reliability and safety of these water supply systems.
The Licensing Program will promote public confidence in the practical application of Rainwater Harvesting and predictably expand the utilization of Rainwater Harvesting across both residential and commercial market sectors.
General acceptance of the rainwater harvesting business would mean jobs for designers, installation crews, engineers, irrigators, and manufacturers of system components, (Fittings, gutters, tanks, valves, pumps, and treatment products)
The Licensing Program will be able to draw upon the existing collective expertise of industry leaders to provide the educational materials and qualified training programs for appropriate direction while establishing the Licensing Program.
The State of Texas will have an opportunity to continue its leadership role in water resource management by establishing this Licensing Program.
Licensees would receive appropriate instruction to qualify them, by education standards, to design and install rainwater harvesting systems that are appropriate to the circumstances of the situation.
Practicing professionals could compete fairly with each other while protecting the general public’s health and safety, especially in systems tasked to produce a potable water supply.
Right now, anyone can represent him or herself as an “expert” designer, inspector or repairer of a rainwater harvesting system and promote their ability to design or work on a rainwater harvesting system. Although the American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association (ARCSA), a private, not-for-profit organization was started in Texas over 20 years ago to provide a national centralized information resource to promote the sound development of the rainwater harvesting businesses in the US, has an extensive training program whereby individuals can become trained and submit evidence of relevant experience to be designated as Accredited Professionals, Accredited Inspectors or Master Rain Harvesters and must thereafter submit proof of continuing education, there is no requirement by the State for persons holding themselves out as experts to have achieved any accreditation from ARCSA or a license from the State.

Why is Rainwater Harvesting important to Texas?

Rainwater harvesting is an essential strategy that will enable the State to meet our future water demands.
Every inch of rain produces approximately 600 gallons of water for every 1000 square feet of roof area. A 2,000 SF roof will produce approximately 1,200 gallons of water for each inch of rain. In Central Texas, we get an average of 30” of rain per year. This 2,000 SF roof is capable of generating 36,000 gallons of water per year. By contrast, a moderately-sized commercial building of 20,000 SF is capable of producing 360,000 gallons of water per year.
Rainwater harvesting raises public awareness of the need for water conservation and promotes active participation by our citizens.
Rainwater harvesting provides an immediately available alternative water source at no additional cost to the State.
Rainwater is currently used as a primary source of water in many locations around the world and the potential for the future growth of this supply is very significant.
Not only does the use of rainwater save municipal water supplies, it also saves the associated energy required to pump municipal water from its source, run the water through the treatment facility and move the water from the treatment facility to the end user.
Properly designed and installed, rainwater harvesting systems work well in all parts of the State, even during drought years.
Rainwater harvesting systems are very effective stormwater management tools that provide flood control and stormwater pollution abatement opportunities.
Rainwater collection is a decentralized system which makes for a more resilient water supply system, buffering water supply from potential interruptions.
Most new water sources require years of planning, design, permitting, financing and construction before they can provide useful results to address today’s challenges. This is not the case with rainwater harvesting systems. For most residential systems, it only takes a few weeks to complete a rainwater system from design through construction. In most commercial retrofit settings, it may be a matter of months.
In addition to all of the positive impacts of providing water where it is needed, rainwater harvesting will provide jobs for designers, installing contractors and their crews, jobs for manufacturers of gutters, PVC piping and fittings, pumps, controllers, filter and disinfection equipment and supplies and irrigators.

What you can do to support this bill

I hope that you see that this bill is very important in creating more opportunities in the uncertain water future of Texas. Rainwater harvesting is a reliable source of water but these systems need to be implemented corrected to ensure not only public safety but also their continued operation.

Please call your representative and senator to voice your support for this bill.

In case you don’t know who represents you in the Texas Legislature, you can find your legislators here.

2017 Texas Legislature: Rainwater System Installer License Bill – HB 173 is a post from the The Water Nexus Blog produced by Chris Maxwell-Gaines of Innovative Water Solutions LLC.

Rainwater Harvesting at Wal-Mart: Saving Money and Living Better

Chris Maxwell-Gaines — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 13:30:03 +0000

Wal-Mart and Sustainability?… an oxymoron you say. If you look at Wal-Mart’s efforts over the past decade, you would say that these two go perfectly together. If large corporations like Wal-Mart decided to strictly adhere to the triple bottom line accounting, how much impact would we see in our local environment? This is a very broad question to answer, but one thing I do know, you have to start somewhere. Say what you want about Wal-Mart, but they transact a ton of business and if they put their weight behind sustainability measures, it will surely make a huge impact.

Walmart’s Rainwater Harvesting Story

Therefore it was great to hear about Wal-Mart implementing rainwater harvesting systems into their stores since these systems will help make a huge water conservation impact.

Wal-Mart’s built an experimental store in McKinney, Texas in 2005. Wal-Mart developed this experimental store in order to test their sustainability initiatives. It interested me greatly since this was the first time I read about a “big box” company that actively designed rainwater harvesting into the project site.

Other than Wal-Mart’s McKinney store, I had never heard about any other rainwater harvesting projects by Wal-Mart.

Until now…

At the Sustainable Operations Summit in June 2012, Don Moseley, Director of Sustainable Facilities for Wal-Mart gave a presentation on Wal-Mart’s water sustainability efforts, including their rainwater harvesting initiatives.

Key Points from the Presentation

Fayetteville, Arkansas Store’s Rainwater Harvesting Cisterns

Wal-Mart began its sustainability journey in 2005 under then-CEO Lee Scott.
Wal-Mart has 8900+ total stores, 100,000 suppliers globally, 2 million Associates, and 200 million customers served each week.
Wal-Mart has 3 main sustainable goals:
- Be supplied 100% by renewable energy (aspirational goal),
- Create zero waste to landfills in US by 2025,
- Sell products that sustain our resources and environment.
An initiative like changing stores to LED lighting is a uniform conversion (the savings from and operation of the LED lights will be the same at every store. This is not the case with rainwater harvesting.
Wal-Mart has 6 stores that incorporate rainwater harvesting into them. While the have about 50 stores that incorporates stormwater collection into ponds, these 6 stores were deliberate corporate decisions to incorporate rainwater and measure its effects.
Rainwater was mainly stored in ponds or retention/irrigation ponds.
McKinney, TX store water savings in 2010: 885,896 gallons (all to site irrigation).
Fayetteville, AR store collects 62% of roof area into two 33,000 gallon aboveground cisterns through siphonic roof drains
Arden, NC: originally designed with 35,000 gallon underground cistern, but due to infeasibility of supplying the irrigation demand for the development, they changed to collecting the runoff into an existing pond that they made larger. They changed landscape design to reduce water needs.
In Arden, water is only $1.76/1,000 gallons so by doing the math with the savings, the harvesting of water doesn’t make business sense.

Lessons Learned from Wal-Mart’s Rainwater Harvesting Initiative

Mr. Moseley provided a summary of the lessons learned through Wal-Mart’s rainwater harvesting efforts:

Reduce overall water and irrigation demand first
Do the math (in order to make the best decision on system design and size)
System commissioning is a must
Set controls and metering expectations early
Clearly define operation and maintenance requirements

For Wal-Mart, rainwater harvesting has to make business sense. Therefore, in most communities, Wal-Mart would probably not promote rainwater harvesting since the cost of water is so low at this point in time. Bottom line, Wal-Mart is about getting rid of waste and using resources more efficiently, but since they are a public company, these efforts must pay off and provide a return on investment to their shareholders.

Implementation Cost for Future Conservation Gains

Mr. Moseley discussed how the implementation of LED lighting in their stores reduces energy costs especially since the places where the LED lights are used, they are running almost 24 hours a day. He says that these changes provide uniform energy savings across all stores. These types of energy saving retrofits are less intrusive and thus less costly to implement so they will get chosen first. So once this improvement is implemented (the low hanging fruit), the next energy conservation step may require more investment and/or time in order to get a return on the investment.

The main issue about not investing in water conservation technologies like rainwater harvesting and graywater reuse during construction, is that once the water savings become needed for bottom-line issues, it will be much more costly to implement these solutions at a later time.

Changing lights in a freezer case from fluorescent lights to LED lights is easy, after-the-fact. Installing collection piping to convey rainwater from certain drainage points and deliver the rainwater to a water storage device such as a cistern is not so easy, after-the-fact. Implemented during construction, these systems would be easy and less expensive, but at the time of construction, water costs will be low and thus the ROI calculations won’t work out.

So once the low-hanging fruit is picked from the “conservation tree”, where will these corporations go to find the next level of conservation and thus cost savings? By not investing in certain technologies upfront, it could cause the next level of conservation to be delayed even longer since implementation costs after-the-fact will prevent quicker adoption of these technologies.

So do you think Wal-Mart should be doing more on the water conservation front?

Rainwater Harvesting at Wal-Mart: Saving Money and Living Better is a post from the The Water Nexus Blog produced by Chris Maxwell-Gaines of Innovative Water Solutions LLC.

Rainwater Collection System Client Highlighted in Home Power Magazine

Chris Maxwell-Gaines — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 13:30:06 +0000

In the June/July issue of Home Power Magazine, one of our clients was highlighted in an article about her transition from well water supply for her home to rainwater-only supply. We worked with Stephen Hren, a writer at Home Power Magazine, on this article about whole house rainwater harvesting systems. He interviewed our client about her experience living in Texas and relying only on her rainwater system to supply her whole house with potable drinking water. This goes to show you that even in an area that experiences a lot of drought conditions, you can still run a household with a rainwater collection system.

Her Rainwater Story

In the summer of 2006, her 438′ deep water well went dry…

[Cue screeching train wreck sound effect]

So rather than drilling a deeper well to the next water-bearing layer in the aquifer, she decided to explore her options. This is when she called us and we were happy to help.

But why tell you the whole story here, you can just read it in the article. Enjoy!

Home Power Magazine > From Well Water to Rainwater

While you are at it, Innovative Water Solutions has been written about and featured in many other magazines over the years. Check out our full list of rainwater collection system magazine articles.

The article shows some pictures of the different components used in our rainwater collection systems. We also have other places you can view pictures of our rainwater harvesting systems.

Rainwater Collection System Client Highlighted in Home Power Magazine is a post from the The Water Nexus Blog produced by Chris Maxwell-Gaines of Innovative Water Solutions LLC.