Joan Miller and her husband
moved from Maryland to Tucson in the 1990s.
Miller took a master gardening class that introduced her
to our region's native and desert adapted plants.
She's been hooked ever since.
But all of that greenery needs some water, as Miller
discovered with her growing collection.
We've had water bills up to $1,000, and that has been
probably about four or five years ago, and I was
harvesting pretty heavily.
Even then, we had to come to an agreement
that we would try to keep the water bill under $700 a month.
Fortunately, she's also
become well acquainted with water harvesting systems.
Her rooftops and containers provide the pathways.
Nature takes it from there, with the water harvesting that
I've done recently, or water bill is around $150 a month .
The efforts that Miller is making are being replicated
all over this region, and Jason McComb
has been helping out with the process
for nearly two decades.
Maycomb is the owner of Southern Arizona Rain Gutters,
which he established with his brother in 2005.
They thought they were going to
be installing gutters part time,
but the business morphed
into a full time
operation that's mostly about water harvesting.
I would imagine this summer's monsoon helped promote
your business, if you will.
It did, but ironically, before we even got the rain,
this was a very, very busy season.
On a typical rough, 1000 square feet of roof
with an inch of rain is a little over
600 gallons of water being dumped in there.
The Community Food Bank of southern
Arizona has one of the most voluminous tanks in the city.
It is adjacent to the warehouse
on Country Club Road, next to the prolific garden
where you can often find Brandon Merchant.
He's the health and Guardian
education coordinator at the Food Bank.
The system behind me is one of the largest cisterns in Tucson.
It holds about 14,700 gallons of water when it's full
And what I like to tell folks is that represents
about what a family of four uses in Tucson every month.
So that includes water for your
your laundry, for your
landscape, for your dishes,
for swimming pools, all that kind of stuff.
And so it's a great visualization, so people
can kind of see like, oh, you know, like that's
that's a whole lot of water that we're using.
Here's more information about efforts to collect rainwater
with the executive director of Watershed Management Group.
The Tucson based organization has been a trailblazer
in this area and other sustainability programs.
We so we've been
helping people live, hide your local here for a whil
now, but we're trying to get
that concept out a little bit more,
especially this year with the re
on the Colorado River.
And people are really wondering what does that mean?
What does that mean if our supply of water from far
away is going to dry up? Do we have water here?
And so we want to let people know that
we do have a local water supply that you can live hydro local
and that we as a city of Tucson, can actually live hydro local.
And part of that is learning all about rainwater harvesting.
When people think of water harvesting,
they usually think of the pipes and the flows and the tanks.
That can be expensive for some residents in the city.
So you're saying that's not
necessary? Yeah, you don't need that at all.
I mean, if you can do it, great,
but we recommend everyone starts with rain gardens, with basins
and you can do it yourself
so that can keep the cost really low.
You can do something
as simple as adding wood chip mulch to your yard,
like putting down some mulch
that helps reduce evaporation and reduces your water bill.
You don't have to irrigate as much.
So there's lots of little things you can do.
You don't have to spend a lot of money. Take a class.
Make a little adjustment.
Use native plants instead of non-native
that will change your water use.
So, yeah, there's lots of little things
that you can do to get on the path of water sustainability.
As part of that,
you have some training called build your own basin.
We offer build your own base workshops,
both virtually and in person.
This is the cheapest way,
the easiest way for you to do rainwater harvesting.
So a basin is a depression in the ground, something
you can easily dig by hand to collect rainwater passively.
And here at the Living Lab and Learning Center,
this whole campus has these basins or rain gardens.
And so through this one hour
class, we teach people how to do that themselves.
And then we send them home with a kit that they can do it
at their own home or in their neighborhood.
And what has been your reaction to this very abundant monsoon
in 2020? My gosh.
Happiness. first of all,
I think we are just also happy to see all this rain,
especially after last year and remembering that our weathe
is variable, that we have year to year variability
to see the abundance of this monsoon gives us hope, really
, and we can see all these basins in action.
And the cool thing is, with all the extra rain,
we're also seeing recharge happening this summer,
which is so important for our groundwater supplies.
Many scientists have dire predictions about long
term sustainability of areas like Tucson.
Are you confident that we can
inhabit this space and live with the resources available?
I am. Yeah, yeah, that's the hydro local message.
We've been sharing
that if we look at rainwater harvesting, if we look at
great water harvesting using recycled water,
if we are recharging and stewarding our
groundwater supplies and then just generally
improving the way we develop our city,
to have green infrastructure,
to have much more efficient fixtures in our buildings,
we do believe that
we can actually meet all our water supplies locally.
And we don't have to bring in water
from the Colorado River, this ship.
Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you so much.