Rain capture answer to water woe (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website, Nairobi

Rainwater harvesting could prove a cheap, easy solution to Africa's water woes, according to a UN report.

Scientists found enough rain falls in some countries to supply six or seven times the current need, and provide security against future droughts.

A pilot project in a Kenyan Maasai community has improved supplies and done away with the daily trek to collect river water.
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"Now we don't have to do that, and the water is better quality, a lot cleaner," she told the BBC News website.

In some regions of Africa, women spend a third of their calories collecting water.
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6143746.stm

The problems in Africa will be familiar to many in the western USA -- plenty of rainfall, but only in overwhelming bursts. Reservoirs and cisterns can save water from heavy rains for months when there is little rain.

[bluerum]

1. Harvesting rainfall. Now why didn't I think of that? nt

[kestrel91316]

2. Too bad they can't legally do it some places. It's ILLEGAL in

parts of CO (that drain into KS) to harvest rainwater and store it. ILLEGAL.

[dubykc]

4. Aren't negotiated riparian rights great?

I'm sure it's illegal in the northern parts of CA too, since that's where a lot of the water for the resurrected deserts comes from.

[bluerum]

6. Now that seems downright un-american. It rains on your land, and you

can't collect it in barrels?

[kestrel91316]

7. Nope. Somehow KS got prior dibs on the rights to water flowing out of CO

and collecting rainfall interferes with that right, now matter how small a scale they might do it on.

[NeoGreen]

3. I've been harvesting RW since 1999...

I live in rural NY and the local groundwater here is in a black shale bedrock aquifer, so it's extremely high in Fe and the yield from my well is less then 0.1 gpm.

In most normal instances my "aquifer" would be classified as an aquitard.

With no local municipal water supply I've had to solve the problem myself and after finding out about RW harvesting, I've never been happier. Rainwater is the best, and it's free.

The funny thing is, I'm a hydrogeologist by trade.

[XemaSab]

5. Go back to FReep, aquitard!

:eyes:

:D

No, but seriously, do you have problems with the pH of the water, or is that sort of a subtle thing that's not noticible by a person?