[Water] Rainwater / Rainfall Collection (merged)

[PeakOiler]

Concerning water rights, if one owns the house and land, the rain that falls upon it is all yours.

Unfortunately in some areas this isn't the case, and rainwater collection is disallowed.

Can you post a reference? That is amazing if true.

That's just one step away from taxing or charging for gravity, sunshine, and wind!

[Gary]

From what reading I've done, water is the next oil.

Globalised water privatization is seen by many as no different than the privatisation of oil or natural gas.

I've read that oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens has founded Mesa Water Company in 1999. He plans to be the one to obtain water from the Oglala aquifer and pipe water to Dallas, Houston, and other major cities in the South and SW USA.

(I think I read this on EnergyBulletin awhile back I could not access Mesa Water's webgpage, but a quick google of "mesa Water" yielded a couple of articles about Mesa's activities -- Boone Pickens seems pretty pleased with the project.)

There is no relationship between money and time, money and food, money and earth, money and minerals, money and air, money and water.

We have created a culture which can only understand in terms of money. Everything will be monetised, including human genes and human life.

Slavery has been making a slow comeback..... wage slaves will soon be thankful for a glass of water and a crust of bread three times a day, eh?

Clean fresh water is getting scarce. Shall we all look for "peak water"? Are we there yet?

-- pedaling for peace and ecojustice -- Gary

[PeakOiler]

Matt Savinar has posted this request at LATOC: "If anybody out there has knowledge of how to get as "water-self sufficient" as possible while still living in the suburbs, city, or a small apartment and and would like to
write an article about how to do it on the cheap, email me."

"On the cheap"??? Well all I can say is not depending on the local water utility is not easy or cheap. I can only imagine what not depending on fossil fuels will be like. I am proud, however, that the rainwater system enabled me to go seven months without the water utility before the drought kicked in. It hasn't rained but perhaps a half an inch in over two months, (currently over 33 days without rain, and none forecasted, and now over a four inch deficit so far this year.)

The link Matt Savinar provided is to this article at FromtheWilderness:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/w ... es.shtml#2

Excerpt:

Petrocollapse:
Can you live without indoor running water?

Written by Jan Lundberg
Culture Change Letter #101
http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php? ... iew&id=14&
Itemid=2.html#cont

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

The answer to the question "Can you live without indoor running water?" is simple: you'll have to. The passing of abundant oil is not shaping up to be a soft landing for those with the fattest asses. And in this world, we all know which nation leads the way in obesity. Contrast this with the image of slender villagers carrying water casks on their heads, and how their food supply tends to be very local: this will be the envy of U.S. consumers caught short.

You can live without functional plumbing, but you cannot live without water. Some indoor plumbing may work after the energy crisis hits with all its might. But, as this report endeavors to warn, the water in your outdoor environment -- such as it is -- will be what you live on (or that doesn't allow you to live at all). What a discovery for the nature deniers to experience. Will frightened hoards be the rule in U.S. cities rather than the exception?

The average amount of water consumed per capita in the U.S. is 183 gallons a day (1990; U.S. EPA). This reflects public water supply usage, and it's twice as high in the western U.S. as in the east. One reason is that irrigation uses 81% of water in the nation. Problems with irrigation: huge energy demand for pumping; drawdowns of ancient aquifers, and salinization. "

<<End excerpt>>

I'm way below the average use stated above (183 gal/day). I use less than 100 gal/day.

All the irrigation from my rainwater system uses no electricity, just gravity.

Signed--praying for rain and doing a rain dance!

[WisJim]

Using flow reducing shower heads and being willing to take shorter showers, installing 1 gallon flush toilets, washing dishes in a dishpan and rinsing in another dishpan instead of rinsing with running water, not running the water while washing up or brushing teeth, not irrigating the garden, but mulching instead, or storing rainwater for irrigation, are all things that we do to cut our water usage. We also either use a wringer washer and double rinse tubs (using about 30 to 40 gallons of water to do all of the laundry) or take the laundry to a laundromat. I estimate that our household of 4 or 5 (varies from time to time) adults uses 100 to 150 gallons of water a day, more in hot weather when we drink more, less in winter when some of us don't shower every day. My estimation is based on actual observations of how many showers, length of showers, number of times the dishes are done, etc. I have actually measured the amount of water used to do dishes, used per minute of shower, etc. Some days we use much less water for various reasons. For years we lived with an outside hand pump for water, and I can tell you that if you are pumping by hand and carrying buckets of water into the house, you will use less water yet.
We could use less water than we do now, without noticeably affecting our standard of living, with a little more effort at avoiding waste.

Jim

[PeakOiler]

I'm back to using city water until it rains again.

Thanks hurricane Emily! I guess my raindance worked! lol The 1,500 gallons of rainwater I collected was great!

As an update since I'm back on the rainwater system, I have only used the city water 3 weeks out of the last 27.

[Armageddon]

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050727/D8BJUD083.html

people who dont think the weather pattern is changing and becoming more violent due to global warming need to wake up already

[basketballjones]

whats global warming?

</sarcasm>

[FireJack]

It doesn't matter anymore. Once oil production starts to go into decline the term "greenhouse gas" will dissapear from everyones mind.

[NeoPeasant]

It doesn't matter anymore. Once oil production starts to go into decline the term "greenhouse gas" will dissapear from everyones mind.

Would that be when the coal burning steam trucks are delivering heating coal to our suburban homes?

[Pfish]

37 inches of rain! Wow! Ditch the car and grab the boat. Just out of curiosity what is the record for rainfall in one day for any part of the world?

[sol]

I think that is the record!!!

[savethehumans]

Don't know about world-wide, but the story armegeddon linked us stated that:

India's previous heaviest rainfall, recorded in the northeastern town of Cherrapunji - one of the rainiest places on Earth - was 33 inches on July 12, 1910

So we're talking over 4 inches more rain that INDIA'S previous record. And remember, India (and Pakistan) are those places where monsoons hit every year, putting land and limb underwater on a regular basis. So when INDIA says this is the worst it's ever been. . . .

[Jdelagado]

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050727/D8BJUD083.html

people who dont think the weather pattern is changing and becoming more violent due to global warming need to wake up already

This MUST be related to peak oil somehow. Maybe Bush ordered the CIA to send this storm into India to decrease oil consumption....

Hmmmm....

jdelagado

[pea-jay]

It doesn't matter anymore. Once oil production starts to go into decline the term "greenhouse gas" will dissapear from everyones mind.

Would that be when the coal burning steam trucks are delivering heating coal to our suburban homes?

Thats assuming we can access our 300 year supply of coal. That is no small feat given the fact we already are more or less producing at capacity. I am not convince that coal will be that shining knight in black armor riding to our energetic rescue.

[Grimnir]

I think this is less weird than tornadoes in the UK (saw some reports of those earlier). It's normal for India to get deluged this time of year; it's only the quantity that's unusual. However, tornadoes are a qualitatively unusual phenomenon in the UK. Quantitative anomolies can be nothing more than flux in normal patterns; quantitative ones may mean that the patterns themselves are changing.

[brentmeister]

Brazil had a cyclone the other year... that was entirely out of left-field.

[Barbara]

This summer we had those flying insects which eat crops in Africa (dunno in english-one of those byblical plagues). Guess where? In Turin! Northern Italy! A snowy and usually cold city!
TV experts said "it's normal in very hot summers"... NORMAL? Are we sub-saharian Africa or what? We never had those insects in EU!!!!

[Doly]

I had considered many possible ways that climate change could affect the UK, but tornadoes were not one of them.

[I_Like_Plants]

Oh, locusts.

Our First Nations folks used to eat them, and they also traditionally caught and ate grasshoppers in Japan. Our midwest farmers have been known to have cookouts featuring whatever pest is eating their wheat/corn, too. Apparently food taboos are as much a problem as in a lot of other places, in Africa.

Oh yeah there was some guy in the bible who lived on honey and locusts too.

[CARVER]

There are now also mini tornadoes in France. Meteo France has issued a weather alarm for large parts of the country. (It's the first I have heard of these things happening in the UK and France).