Harvesting rainfall to solve a critical national shortage of

potable water
Architecture Examiners Comments: This was the very first article that was written for my column.
The Examiners readership has expanded drastically since then, so many of the new readers have not
had the opportunity to read it. Now more than ever, it is time for communities to stop relying on
underground aquifers for all of their potable water. Recent studies by the Federal Environmental
Protection Agency have identified serious problems in water systems around the nation. The water
table is dropping in many regions, while toxic agricultural chemicals are being found in supposedly
purified drinking water. Rainwater harvesting technology is simple and almost always cost effective.
I urge community leaders around the nation to seriously consider how this technology might be
applied to their needs.
Water, water everywhere . . . and not a drop to drink. This famous line from the poem, The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner is becoming an increasingly common complaint throughout urban areas of the
United States. Too many water consumers are competing for usage for natural sources of water that
are often polluted with dangerous chemicals from industries or stormwater runoff from parking lots
and farmlands. In drought prone regions, the line could be changed to water, water nowhere.
Ancient underground aquifers and 20th century reservoirs are drying up.
A technology, almost as ancient as civilization itself, offers a solution to this growing national crisis.
Its initial AND operating costs are far less than that required for urban water treatment &
distribution systems, yet relatively few communities are currently implementing the solution. The
concept can only be found in widespread usage in certain rural areas or in desert enclaves.
The solution is the construction of rainwater catchment cisterns that are incorporated into the
buildings where the water will be consumed. In other words, structures would be designed or
modified to collect the natural rainfall that falls onto the property, purify it and then store it in
cisterns until the water is needed by the occupants of the building. In regions with moderate or
heavy precipitation, it would also be possible for large commercial structures like into shopping
malls and parking lots to collect enough surplus water to service entire residential neighborhoods.
The technology is actually less complex than that used to do to supply water from central treating
plants. The main obstacle is apparently that governments are not encouraging rain cisterns, since no
revenue would flow to their budgets from decentralized water collection.
A 250 Year Old Example, Only an Hours Drive from the Nations Capital
Ironically, one of the most successful and time tested examples of rain cistern technology is only an
hours drive away from the nations capital in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The northern
Shenandoah Valley is one of the driest regions east of the Great Plains. Most of its 28 of
precipitation occurs during the winter and spring months. Most shallow wells go dry by midsummer. The original settlers in the 1750s solved this problem by building brick masonry cisterns
underground and channeling all the rainwater that fell on roofs into the underground cisterns.
During the summer and fall, the cisterns function just like wells. Nowadays, if the cisterns go dry,
the farmers purchase water from bulk haulers, who pump their water from mountain springs.
However, when cisterns are connected both to home and barn roofs, farmers rarely need to
purchase water.
Cisterns are still being installed for new rural homes in the Shenandoah Valley that are outside the

jurisdiction of public utilities. Often the rainwater is filtered before entering the cistern. Periodically,
homeowners will add water purification tablets to the like prefabricated concrete tanks to cut down
on the growth of yeasts and bacteria. The raw cistern water is used for washing clothes and vehicles
also watering gardens while water, being piped to bathrooms and kitchens, first passes through a
water purifier.
Native Americans Built Cisterns 2000 Years Ago
The concept of cisterns is an old one. The Mayas of the Yucatan Peninsula constructed enormous
cisterns as their villages became cities. The Yucatan Peninsula has very few streams or ponds. The
primary source of water in that region has always been deep natural sinkholes that the Mayas called
cenotes. Large Maya cities often developed near cenotes. Over time these natural wells would
become inadequate for the population level or inconvenient for much of the residents. To these
provide a hedge against droughts, Maya architects designed enormous chambers under public
plazas and buildings to store the rain runoff from the paved surfaces. They were essentially manmade cenotes that were utilized in a similar manner. These cisterns often continued to serve the
needs of remnant populations long after the civic centers were abandoned. Some 1000-1500 year old
Maya cisterns are still in use today.
Application of the Cistern Concept to Metropolitan Area Households
Recent headlines from several regions of the United States point toward a growing crisis in the
availability of potable water. Public reservoirs are going dry and ancient aquifers are being drained.
In the Southwest, the obvious cause is that populations have concentrated in desert and semi-desert
regions. Under the best of circumstances, natural precipitation would be inadequate to meet the
needs of the metropolitan areas. Local governments in desert regions have no choice, but to build
massive aqueducts from sparsely populated mountains that experience heavy snowfall. In the East
the causes of water shortages tend to be more complex. In coastal areas, excessive pumping from
deep underground wells is drawing brine water or sulfurous chemicals into the aquifers, thus
making the water non-potable, or at least, unsuitable for human consumption. In other areas, the
problems seem to be rooted in the lack of long-range infrastructure planning and inept
administration of existing water resources.
Cisterns offer the most viable solution to water shortages in many parts of the United States. They
utilize simple technology and relatively inexpensive materials. Residential cistern systems can be
installed and operating in a matter of a few days. A major reservoir and 100+ mile long aqueduct for
a metropolitan area might take 25 years to get into operation and cost several hundred million to
over a billion dollars for land acquisition, design and construction.
The fabrication of cisterns offers enormous potential business for locally owned companies that
today manufacture septic tanks and concrete storm pipes. Thoroughly cleaned, underground
gasoline tanks are also very suitable cisterns for potable water. Widespread demand for cisterns
would create a healthy market for new manufacturing operations to start up. Being relatively small
operations, the money would stay at home rather than being dispersed all over the world as the case
of major public works projects.
Strangely enough, the concept of cisterns has been applied to stormwater management for over two
decades in most metropolitan regions, but not carried the slightly further step of providing hydraulic
resources for potable water. Most metropolitan areas require all commercial, industrial, and
institutional developments to construct stormwater retention basins, which will store proscribed
volumes of water during periods of excessive precipitation or snow, melt. Because they are typically

surfaced with soil, during much of the year, these basins become infected, manmade marshes that
function as breeding grounds for mosquitoes and smell like cesspools. Because the retained water
contains increasingly higher levels of petroleum-based residue from parking lots and toxic chemicals
from commercially maintained landscapes, the water becomes increasingly toxic to wildlife, and
therefore, can not even be considered manmade wetland habitats.
Application of the cistern concept to creating dispersed hydraulic resources will require refinements
of plumbing codes and existing stormwater retention standards. For cistern water to be suitable for
human consumption, or even watering vegetable gardens, it must be drained from non-polluting
surfaces. Most roofs and decks are suitable catchment areas for potable water; parking lots and
lawns are not. Down-sized retention basins would still be necessary to control run-off from parking
lots. Use of cistern water only for washing clothes and watering lawns would require a dual water
supply system and water pump. However, in reality, most rainwater is purer than the water coming
out of metropolitan rivers, so with some modest treatment, rainwater could be used throughout a
house.
http://www.examiner.com/article/harvesting-rainfall-to-solve-a-critical-national-shortage-of-potable-w
ater
http://www.fao.org/docrep/T0551E/t0551e05.htm