For Arlo, and the fishies
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
Preface
Part 1: Water-Wise Basics
1. Why Conserve Water?
Reasons to Conserve Water
Where Does Your Water Come From?
What’s a Water-Wise Home?
2. What’s Wrong with Our Water Systems?
The Good News and Bad News
Sources of Water
Why Is Water Scarce?
Sewage Treatment and Stormwater Pollution
When Rain Pollutes: Stormwater
A Better Water Future
3. Saving Water in the Home and Landscape
Cultivating a Water-Conserving Ethic
Fix the Leaks!
The Mini Makeover
Does Your Landscape Have a Drinking Problem?
Designing A Water-Wise Landscape
Irrigation Systems
Greywater, Rainwater, and Waterless Toilets
Part 2: Water-Wise Solutions
4. Greywater Reuse: Planning Your Home System
Identify Your Greywater Sources
Your Home’s Drain, Waste, and Vent System
Estimate Your Greywater Flows
Find the Flow Rates of Faucets, Showerheads, and Washing Machines
Soil Structure and Type
Identify Your Soil Type with a Soil Ribbon Test
Conduct an Infiltration Test
Mulch Basins
Choosing Plants for Greywater Irrigation
How Much Water Do My Plants Want?
System Design Considerations
Plant-Friendly Soaps
When Greywater Is Not a Great Idea
Using Greywater to Flush
Health and Safety Considerations
Codes and Regulations
5. Installing Your Greywater System
Choosing a Greywater System
Laundry-to-Landscapte (L2L) System
Installing an L2L Irrigation System
Irrigation Options
Branched Drain Gravity-Fed System (Without Storage)
Installing a Branched Drain System
How to Wire an Actuator
Greywater System with Tank and Pump
Building a Pumped System
Manufactured Greywater Systems
Other Types of Greywater Systems
Greywater in Freezing Climates
Plumbing Basics for Greywater Installation
6. Rainwater Harvesting: Planning Your System
How Will You Use the Rainwater?
Keeping Rainwater in Your Landscape: Permeable Hardscape and Rain Gardens
Roofwater Collection
Basic Components of a Catchment System
Using the Rain Indoors
Codes and Regulations
7. Building Rainwater Harvesting Systems
Planning and Designing a Rain Garden
Constructing a Rain Garden
Roofwater Collection Systems
Converting a Single 55-Gallon Rain Barrel
Connecting Rain Barrels Together: A Daisy Chain
Installing an Aboveground Plastic Rainwater Tank
Irrigation Systems
8. Waterless and Composting Toilets
Composting is Composting
Toilet Types
Composting Toilets and the Law
Using Urine as Fertilizer
Choosing a Composting Toilet
Building a Sawdust Bucket Toilet
Building a Urine-Diverting Toilet
Compost Piles and Bins
Building a Barrel Composting Chamber with Netting
Resources
Acknowledgments
Index
Other Storey Titles You Will Enjoy
Copyright
Share Your Experience!
Preface
Do you want to use less water? Capture rainwater falling from the sky? Redirect water from your shower to irrigate the landscape? Improve the health of rivers and creeks in your community? If so, this book is for you.
You may be interested in water conservation because your well is running dry, or maybe you work with a watershed restoration group. Perhaps you want to promote and protect clean rivers and oceans because you love to fish or swim, or you’re a parent, grandparent, or aunt or uncle and want to create a healthy world for future generations. If you’re a landscaper, plumber, or building contractor, offering sustainable services to clients makes good business sense. And if you don’t have access to a municipal water supply, conserving and reusing water may be far preferable (and much more affordable) than acquiring a new water supply. Regardless of your motivation, you’ve already taken the first step.
Nearly 15 years ago, while I was living with six friends in a rented house in Oakland, California, I had my first water shock. A water bill arrived in the mail — first time I’d ever seen one. I can’t remember exactly how many gallons we had used, or how much we had to pay, but I clearly remember my shock at seeing it. The first two questions in my mind were How can we possibly be using this much water?!
and Where does this water come from, anyway?
My search for answers to these questions sparked the beginning of my water education. As I learned more about this water system I depended on — and how damaging it was — I began to look for alternatives.
The first change I made was to redirect the bathroom sink drain to dump into a bucket. We used this greywater to bucket-flush
the toilet. It was so simple we couldn’t stop there. My housemate Cleo and I tackled the shower next; we reconfigured the pipes and built our first greywater system. How satisfying it was when the shower water finally flowed into the garden.
This book shares the knowledge I’ve gained over the past 15 years and shows you how my friends and I transformed our own home to conserve and protect Earth’s precious freshwater. In these pages I will show you how to improve the efficiency of your fixtures, reuse household greywater, collect rainwater, and install waterless toilets.
Writing a how-to book is an exciting opportunity to share these concrete skills with more people. Besides the how, there is the why: in Part I, I talk about why our current water system is unsustainable and what simple, small-scale changes can help fix it. Part II covers the principles of simple greywater, rainwater catchment, and composting toilet systems, providing step-by-step instructions that anyone can implement with a few tools and basic construction skills. These simple, low-cost systems can cut your home’s water consumption in half, or better. Because the book is intended for ordinary DIYers, I don’t focus on complex systems requiring specialized tools and training, but have included profiles of people living with advanced systems, as well as resources for learning more about them.
I’ve also included tips for working with (and improving) state and local regulations, as well as interviews with progressive regulators and examples of what worked for us in California. Policy change isn’t a standard feature for how-to books, but when it comes to water-wise systems, codes and local agencies can be a major barrier.
I hope this book helps you transform your home to save water and create productive, ecological landscapes.
Part 1
Water-Wise Basics
What’s Wrong with Our Water Systems and How You Can Change It
Water, save it for what you love,
is one of my favorite water utility slogans, designed to teach people the importance of conservation. Others, such as Every drop counts
and Got water? Do your part, be water smart,
remind us of the small steps we can take to reduce overall consumption. While fixing a leaking toilet and installing a water-efficient showerhead may not be as exciting as building a greywater system, these simple actions can save as much, or even more, water.
The discussion in Part I of this book sets the stage for the how-to projects of Part II. Before crawling under the house to check out your plumbing, or researching local rainwater data to plan a rainwater catchment system, it’s important to understand where your water comes from, where it goes, and what is impacted along the way. Chapter 1 and chapter 2 help you understand the problems and challenges of municipal water systems, while chapter 3 presents a range of practical options for reducing water consumption at home: finding and fixing leaks, choosing efficient irrigation systems, and designing beautiful, productive and water-efficient landscapes. You’ll also learn the basics of greywater, rainwater, and composting toilet systems so you can determine which are a good fit for your home (maybe all of them!).
Chapter 1
Why Conserve Water?
We need water for almost everything we have and do: our food, clothing, electricity, and almost every item in our homes, not to mention drinking, cooking, and cleaning. In the past, water shaped civilizations, determining the size and locations of population centers as well as travel routes and what food was available. Today, natural water systems have been re-engineered for human use: instead of flowing to the sea, most water flows toward cities, large agriculture, and industry.
When we turn on the kitchen faucet, out flows water — like magic. Only it’s not magic. That water came from somewhere. If it hadn’t been diverted by people, it would have flowed in a river, creek, spring, or underground aquifer. Where did that water come from? Which river? What creek? How deep an aquifer? Is it being recharged as fast as it’s being pumped out?
Answers to these questions may not be obvious. The infrastructure connecting our taps to the water source has become practically invisible, and most people don’t think about what river flushes down the toilet or how many salmon died when the dam was built to supply their town. But we should. And when we do examine our water system, it becomes apparent what needs to change.
Reasons to Conserve Water
Where Does Your Water Come From?
What’s a Water-Wise Home?
Reasons to Conserve Water
When we save a gallon of freshwater, it’s a gallon our water company won’t look for in a new dam, a water transfer, or a desalination plant to provide more supply. It’s a gallon that could keep a river deeper and cooler, oxygenating a salmon as it swims to its spawning grounds and preventing the growth of toxic algae. It’s a gallon that emerges from a desert spring, providing lifesaving drinking water for animals. It’s a gallon that can grow local food in a sustainable way without the waste and pollution of industrial agriculture.
Save Water, Save Energy, Spare the Air
Hidden behind each drop of water is a spark of energy. It takes energy to transport water from the source to our homes. It takes energy to clean the water to drinking quality and more energy to heat it. Just warming the water for one shower takes as much energy as it does to power a light bulb for more than 200 hours (25 gallons takes 17,000 Btus or 5 kilowatt-hours). This close relationship between water and energy, referred to as watergy, or the water-energy nexus, connects our water-conserving practices to climate change and air pollution. At the household level about 20 percent of our total energy use goes toward heating our water. At the sewer plant even more energy is used to clean the water for disposal. In California nearly 20 percent of the electricity and 32 percent of the natural gas used in the entire state is for water.
All this energy makes a lot of pollution! According to the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the energy to treat and distribute all this water releases approximately 116 billion pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, causing as much global-warming pollution each year as ten million cars.
By redirecting water and nutrients that typically flow away from our homes into the yard, we can save water and enhance the ecological benefit of our landscapes. Rainwater and greywater can grow trees to shade the house, reducing cooling needs. Fruit trees and other edibles provide truly local food, reducing food miles and their associated carbon footprint.
A mere one-half of one percent of all the water on earth is available freshwater.
Save Water, Save Money
Anyone who pays a water truck to haul in water knows how much that water costs. Anyone who pays a water bill knows water pricing involves more than just buying water. The costs reflected in the bill cover maintaining the delivery infrastructure and operating the sewer plant, while the water itself may be virtually free. Simple efficiency upgrades, like installing a low-flow showerhead, quickly pay for themselves, while payback for other systems, such as rainwater and greywater, take much longer under current water rates (although the savings do add up over time, and water rates are increasing). For water districts, monetary savings can be significant: Residents of San Antonio, Texas, once used 225 gallons per day. The city, faced with costs on new water rights to their aquifer of $5,000 per acre-foot and a new dam-pipeline project priced at around $1,000 an acre-foot, opted to spend just $300 per acre-foot by investing in conservation. Between the beginning of the program in 1993 and the year 2008, San Antonio residents lowered their per-capita usage to 140 gallons a day, and the city saved nearly $550 million.
Drought-Proof Your Home
The most basic definition of drought is a lack of precipitation over an extended time. California and the other Southwestern states are considered drought states
because they experience dry periods on a regular basis. But droughts occur in any climate when current precipitation is lower than historic averages. A drought in Florida looks different from a drought in Texas or Australia but can be just as devastating to the local environment. With climate change, even areas once considered water-rich, such as the Southeast, have recently experienced droughts.
Droughts also occur when the supply of water doesn’t meet the demand of people, animals, and plants. Humans can create drought conditions by using more than their fair share. An increase in water use upstream can cause shortages for those living downstream, even if precipitation doesn’t change.
What can we do to prepare for droughts? Our municipal water systems are large, inflexible, and unable to cope with changing precipitation patterns. A dam is impossible to move. Acquiring new water rights to an over-allocated river is not feasible. Agencies are slow to act until there is an acute crisis. Fortunately, there is much we can do to prepare our own homes, independent of centralized systems. Each water-efficient fixture, greywater and rainwater harvesting system, or waterless toilet is a step to drought-proof our homes and landscapes. As we live more in tune with our local climate, we’ll discover that you can’t experience a shortage if you don’t need additional water.
Reduce Everyday Waste
There’s plenty wrong with our existing home water systems, ranging from basic logistical issues to cultural behaviors. Yet most of these problems are easily solved.
Problems with Conventional Home Water Systems
Our homes are inefficient. Unnecessarily large amounts of water are used in toilets, sinks, showers, and washing machines.
Water is used needlessly — for example, in spraying down driveways and over-irrigating plants.
Water quality doesn’t match the need. Potable water is used for everything, including flushing toilets and irrigating landscapes.
All wastewater
is sent to the sewage treatment plant or septic system. Water from the bath is treated the same as water leaving the toilet.
Yards are designed so rainwater runs off the land, creating flooding and pollution problems and preventing rainwater from being used as a resource.
Where Does Your Water Come From?
I grew up with a neighborhood water supply in Northern California. An artesian spring filled a storage tank that fed a dozen houses on our country road. If a neighbor left the hose on all night, or if a pipe broke, the tank would run dry and we’d have to wait for it to refill. I knew where the water came from, and where it went — into the septic tank and leach line under the front lawn.
When I left home to go to college, it took four years for me to wonder where my new water supply came from. Thinking back, I find it ironic that I graduated with a degree in Environmental Science from UC Berkeley but had no idea where my drinking water came from. I’m thankful for that first water bill and the effect it had on me and my household.
It didn’t take long for us to learn where Oakland water originates: 93 miles away from the Bay Area is the Mokelumne River, the source of our drinking water. Snow melting in the Sierra Nevada mountains forms rushing creeks that cascade into the river. The first time I went to see my drinking river, I savored the beauty of the clear, cold water, shaded by bay and maple trees as it flowed quickly by.
A few miles downstream the river stops, blocked by the Pardee Dam. The river that resumes on the other side of the dam bears little resemblance to the one upstream. The water district has rights to divert 325 million gallons per day. From that day on, I saw the flowing Mokelumne River in my mind’s eye every time I turned on the tap.
So, where does your water come from — what river, creek, or aquifer? Many people are as ignorant of their water supply as I was. A recent Nature Conservancy poll found that 77 percent of Americans (excluding people using a private well) don’t know the source for the water they drink, cook with, and shower in.
Getting to Know Your Watershed
We all know our street address, county, and state, but few of us know what watershed we live in. A watershed encompasses all the land that collects and drains water to a single outlet, such as a creek or river. Our drinking water may come from within a local watershed or be piped from a distant one. Our homes can be part of both a local watershed and a larger regional watershed.
Rainwater flows off our roof and into the street, where it mixes with rainwater flowing from all our neighbors’ homes and enters the nearest storm drain, creek, or river. Everyday pollutants impact the health of our local waterways: oil and brake-pad dust on the streets, fertilizers and pesticides from our landscapes, all of these are washed into the creek after a rain.
Our local watershed may be connected to a larger watershed; the creek flows into a river, and into the ocean. In Oakland I lived in the Temescal Creek watershed, a culverted creek that flowed to San Francisco Bay. We were also part of the giant San Francisco Bay Delta watershed, which receives water from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, encompassing 75,000 square miles. Nearly half the surface water that falls as rain or snow in the entire state flows through this watershed, with every home along the way impacting the health of the bay.
There are many ways to get involved with your local watershed. Watershed groups, beach cleanups, restoration projects, and creek groups are found all across the country. Creek hikes, sunsets at the beach, and strolls along the river are great ways to get to know the land and water. Websites of national organizations, such as The Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (see Resources), will help you discover the source of your drinking water and connect with local watershed organizations. Also check out your own water district’s website to learn about the local supply and history of your water source.
What’s a Water-Wise Home?
A water-wise home conserves and reuses water to create ecological and efficient water systems. It can even be water-neutral, meaning that no more water is consumed in the home than is collected from the rain, and it can be disconnected from the sewer, treating and reusing all water on-site. No matter what steps you take to make your home more water-wise, it will most certainly use less water. A recent study (see Resources) found that an ordinary household saves nearly 15,000 gallons a year after installing a simple greywater system.
Features of a Water-Wise Home
Fixtures and appliances are efficient.
Water is reused. Greywater — water coming from sinks, showers, and washing machines — is used for irrigation or toilet flushing.
Potable water is used only for potable needs: drinking, cooking, and showering.
Rainwater is collected and infiltrated into the landscape.
Products used in the water are nontoxic and compatible for irrigation.
Systems foster awareness and stewardship of natural water systems.
Learning how to use water more intelligently is fun and empowering. Some of these changes are as simple as switching out a showerhead, while others, like installing a greywater system, require more effort.
At the simplest level, saving water and reusing what we already have is a commonsense way to save money and resources. Simple efficiency upgrades, such as fixing leaks and installing lower-flow showerheads, can reduce our household use dramatically. Nationally, if everyone upgraded their homes we’d save around 5.4 billion gallons per day!
Watershed Success
Problem: On the Mattole River, in Northern California, a combination of rural homes pumping water from the creeks for household use and the legacy of logging and watershed degradation culminated in creeks running dry just as salmon needed the water to spawn. Residents had to shift their water-use practices to coexist with salmon.
Solution: Sanctuary Forest, a local nonprofit, worked with residents and scientists to create an alternative system. By filling large water storage tanks during the wet season, residents didn’t need to pump out of the creek in the dry season. Their success was immediate. For the first time since monitoring started, with 65 percent of pumps turned off
during the dry season, the stream flow was the same downstream of houses as it was upstream of them. The community also created infiltration ponds to recharge the groundwater to feed streams during dry weather.
Chapter 2
What’s Wrong with Our Water Systems?
There are a lot of things wrong with our water systems. From where we get water to how much we use, and from what we put into it to where it goes. If you have this book in your hands, you probably already know there are other options: we can conserve and reuse water instead of wasting and polluting it.
Deepening our understanding of the problems with our current system can strengthen our conviction to change it. This chapter offers an overview of some environmental and social challenges we face today, and what people are doing to solve them. Through our collective actions we can redesign our water systems — from the home scale to the community scale — for a secure and sustainable water future.
The Good News and Bad News
Sources of Water
Why Is Water Scarce?
Sewage Treatment and Stormwater Pollution
When Rain Pollutes: Stormwater
A Better Water Future
The Good News and Bad News
Before diving into the problems, let’s consider the benefits of the current system. Most people in the United States and Canada (as well as in Europe, Australia, and really any developed
country) have access to an affordable, clean, reliable water supply delivered right to their homes. Considering the 780 million people in the world who don’t have clean water to drink, and the 1.8 billion who have to walk to collect water and carry it home, our water system is doing pretty well.
Did you use an indoor toilet today, or did you rise before dawn to go outside, fearful for your personal safety? Open defecation, performed each day by more than a billion people around the world, is degrading to human dignity as well as hazardous for public health. Most of us have no problem finding a safe, sanitary toilet to use or a sink to wash our hands. Building codes require these in every habitable dwelling, and most establishments offer them to their customers free of charge.
Looking Back
Not so long ago, in the 1800s, cholera and dysentery outbreaks were commonplace in every major city. From Paris to New York, London to Montreal, cholera outbreaks killed people by the thousands. Neither sewage nor drinking water was treated, as it wasn’t understood how contaminated water caused illness. In the late 1800s, with the acceptance of the germ theory of disease transmission, municipal water suppliers began treating drinking water before distributing it to the populace. Later, the Clean Water Act of 1972 in the U.S. required sewage to be treated, and the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 set national standards for water quality. Our modern plumbing system, with a drinking water treatment plant on one end and wastewater treatment plant on the other, has, without a doubt, greatly improved public health. As the plumbers say, The plumber protects the health of the nation.
Hidden Costs
The problem with these advances in health and sanitation is that we have ignored their hidden costs. What was lost to achieve these gains? And, importantly, are there alternatives to the current system? Can we have clean water to meet our human needs while protecting natural water systems? Can we work with Nature instead of against her?
Yes, we can. Solutions are plentiful, and many can be found in this book.
The Bad News: Our Water System Is Destructive and Unsustainable
Here is a laundry list of problems with our current water delivery system. With our collective efforts, each problem has an attainable solution.
We consider local rainwater a problem and attempt to get rid of it as quickly as possible, instead of using it to supply our water needs and recharge local water tables.
We rely heavily on dams for water storage, which can destroy river ecosystems.
We withdraw too much from rivers, altering the ecosystem and damaging aquatic life.
We pump groundwater at a rate faster than it can be replenished. This water will eventually run out.
We store water in reservoirs and transport it in open canals, losing massive quantities to evaporation.
We rely on centralized water systems (large dams and reservoirs), which are vulnerable to climate change and cannot be easily altered.
Our water systems take as much water as possible for municipal or water company use, disregarding the negative effects on those downstream: wildlife, fish, fishing and rafting industries, and native communities whose culture, sustenance, and religious practices are rooted in their local waters.
There is little connection between the water user and the water supply. People don’t see the impact their water consumption has on natural systems. This fosters a sense of entitlement and ownership over the water, rather than a sense of stewardship and respect for the water.
We try to overcome nature instead of working within natural limitations of a region. A simple example: green lawns in the desert.
Sources of Water
Before continuing, let’s refresh our memories about the water cycle. The Earth’s water is always on the move. Powered by the sun, the hydrologic (water) cycle is the massive movement of water between land, sea, and sky. Water evaporates from the oceans and travels up into the atmosphere, where it comes down to the earth as rain and snow. This precipitation may soak into the ground and be taken up by a plant, or soak down past the plant roots deeper into the soil, later to emerge from a spring or creek. Or, it may run off to flow in a creek or river back to the sea. Molecules of water cycle endlessly this way for billions of years.
The water cycle is simple yet complex, particularly the relationship between water flowing above and below the ground. Surface water flows are closely connected to local groundwater; hydrologists estimate that nearly half of stream flow comes from groundwater. It’s important to understand that water flows through this cycle at very different rates. Some water molecules cycle rather quickly, moving from the ocean to the sky to the land in a few days or weeks. Water in a shallow groundwater table may return to the ocean in a few months, or years or even decades. But the deeper groundwater aquifers don’t operate on a human timescale. It may take a water molecule centuries or millennia to emerge naturally.
Life on Earth depends on having water on the surface, with our rivers and lakes, as well as in the ground. As cities, industry, and agriculture pump water out from deep within the Earth, we are living out of balance with the renewable supply of water. We’ll talk more about groundwater.
Rivers: The Circulatory System
Rivers are the Earth’s circulatory system. Water flows through the rivers to the ocean to the clouds and back again. The hundreds of trillions of gallons flowing in rivers make up just a fraction of a percent of all the freshwater on Earth, yet they sustain so much terrestrial life. Salmon bring ocean nutrients upstream, fertilizing forests and feeding a web of aquatic life.
We know what happens when our arteries get clogged: a heart attack. What happens when a river is clogged — when the water flow is stopped by an immense concrete dam? In the U.S. alone, rivers are plugged by around 75,000 dams. Along with the water, these dams trap silt and nutrients. Instead of flowing downstream and being deposited in river deltas to sustain fertile floodplains and vital habitat, sediments clog the spawning area above the dam — that is, if the fish can even get past the dam (see Dams Kill Salmon).
A dammed river is ecologically different from a free-flowing one. The artificial lake behind the dam stores massive amounts of water to be piped away for human use. Dams alter the amount of water flowing through the river, the temperature and oxygen levels of the water, and the speed with which it flows to the sea.
While dams provide millions of people with drinking water, irrigate our crops, electrify our cities, and control floods, they destroy our river ecosystems. We may be dependent on dams today, but that doesn’t mean we have to be in the future. Each greywater system, rain garden, and composting toilet is a step on the path away from reliance on dams and toward healthy, free-flowing rivers.
The hydrologic (water) cycle
Let the Rivers Flow: The Undamming Movement
The largest dam removal in history is under way (at the time of writing), involving two dams on the Elwha River. This three-year removal project began in the fall of 2011. These early-1900 dams blocked fish passage a few miles from the sea, decimating salmon runs in what was once the largest salmon-bearing river in Washington state. The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe fought for this removal project from the day the dams were built, and tribal restoration crews have been preparing for the salmon’s return, restoring mile after mile of salmon streams. The river is going to be given a second chance to restore itself,
remarks tribal member Byron Bennett as an excavator tears into the Elwha Dam.
Nationwide, dam removal is booming. Roughly 1,100 dams have been removed in the past hundred years, and the rate has quickened more recently, with 800 taken out in the past 20 years. Most of these dams are obsolete, posing a danger to below-dam residents while also harming the creek or river ecosystem. The White Salmon River in Washington flows freely for the first time in more than 100 years; the Marmot Dam on the Sandy River in Oregon and Horse Creek Dam in California went out with a bang. Michigan is embarking on the largest dam removal in its history, with three dam removals in the works on the Boardman River to restore natural river conditions and improve fishing. The removal of two dams on Maine’s Penobscot River, in combination with adding fish passage to other dams, will open access to 1,000 miles of Atlantic salmon habitat, the result of years of hard work and collaboration between river restoration groups and the Penobscot Nation.
What happens to the river after the dam? After Maine’s Edwards Dam (built in 1837) was removed in 1999, the first time an operating hydroelectric dam was removed in favor of restoration, The Kennebec River has come to life magnificently over the past ten years, just as we knew it would if given a chance,
said Brownie Carson, then executive director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine. Evidence of the river’s rebirth is everywhere. . . . Eagles, osprey, and sturgeon are spotted daily; seals have been seen chasing striped bass as far inland as Waterville; and this spring the river hosted the largest alewife run on the East Coast. The Kennebec’s revival has been a true wonder of nature.
Dams Kill Salmon
In 1924, after the first Bullards Bar Dam was built on the Yuba River, the returning salmon encountered the dam for the first time. Unable to pass it, they died at the base. So many dead salmon floated downstream of the dam that the stench became unbearable. Pacific Gas & Electric Company workers resorted to torching the carcasses to alleviate the smell.
Dams built without fish passage prevent salmon from accessing their spawning grounds, while those built with passage present new challenges for baby fish. Salmon thrive in cool water; warmer water makes them more susceptible to parasites and disease. As water slows to a trickle in the reservoir behind the dam, baby salmon must navigate warm upper waters that are as lethal as the cold, oxygen-depleted deep waters below. The trip to the sea that once took a few days can now take more than a month.
Salmon populations have plummeted since the dam-building frenzy of the mid-twentieth century. Atlantic salmon are extinct in many rivers and surviving populations are a fraction of their historic numbers. Most Pacific salmon runs in the western states are between 2 and 5 percent of their historic sizes, with many stocks of wild salmon extinct and the remaining ones endangered.
Rain: A Gift from the Sky
Our homes interact with water in two main ways: how water arrives and how it leaves. Most homes have two sources of water: the pipe flowing in with drinking water (from a well or a municipal supply), and rain or snow that falls from the sky. Similarly, water leaves our homes either via the sewer line flowing to the sewer treatment plant or a septic system, or as runoff, also called stormwater.
When we utilize water falling from the sky, we strike a balance with our natural water supply. Collecting and using rainwater have no negative impacts on another watershed. If we use that rainwater to grow food, create shade plants, and provide habitat, we improve our ecological landscape and thereby improve the health of our watershed. Chapter 6 and chapter 7 will teach you how to catch and use rainwater.
When we ignore the rainwater falling onto our homes and rely on the second supply — the pipe — we connect our daily existence to a smörgåsbord of environmental and social problems. To avoid this, all we have to do is to look up to the sky and harvest the rain. It doesn’t take much precipitation to be successful. As you will see, some people live modern and comfortable lifestyles relying on a mere 8 inches of annual rainfall.
Groundwater: Nonrenewable Fossil Water?
Around 30 percent of the Earth’s freshwater is underground (groundwater). This water once fell as rain or snow and soaked slowly down through the upper layers of soil, filling cracks and pores in the soil. The water table is the boundary below which the soil becomes saturated with water (where all the air spaces between the rocks are full of water). An aquifer refers to an area where the ground holds a lot of water. It is both permeable and porous, enabling water to be pumped out.
Shallow aquifers are typically recharged quickly and have been a source of water for humans throughout history, particularly in arid climates. It wasn’t until the 1950s that fossil fuel energy became widely available, enabling people to drill and pump from deeper and deeper wells. Today, groundwater supplies drinking water for two billion people and irrigates approximately 40 percent of the world’s food supply.
If water pumped from the ground is replaced through infiltration from the rain, groundwater is renewable. Without that balance, groundwater can be as nonrenewable as oil. Much of the major reserves, like the giant Ogallala aquifer of the Great
