Water Conservation? The Sky’s The Limit

By Susan Carpenter

It isn’t often that it rains in L.A. for six days running, as it did this week. The inches Mother Nature dumped on us may not have cured the drought, but they did more than just wash our cars for free. They offered proof of what many water sustainability experts believe: that much of the water we need at home already falls from the sky and can reduce our dependence on ever-dwindling and expensive-to-import supplies.

If only we could catch it.

I have a variety of rain catchment systems at my house. I’ve written about a type of cistern fencing called a Waterwall that can hold 634 gallons, I’ve modified my parkway with a water-abosrbing mini trench called a bioswale, and I’ve installed a 3,000-gallon infiltration pit in my backyard that takes the rain from my roof and flows it into a drainage pond (not for reuse but to replenish area groundwater). Then there’s my most recent addition: rain barrels.

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