alafarmnews

Water Shortage Problems?
Here Comes A Rain Dance!

By Jerry A. Chenault

"All day I face, the barren waste, without the taste of water . . . cool, clear water, water." Recognize the song? I think it came out in the 1930s by a group called "The Sons of the Pioneers." Anyway, that song pretty much fits the bill in Alabama since 2005. We’ve been about as dry as Bob Newhart’s comedy. Makes me want a Nehi "sody" just thinking about it.

I do have a little good news for you, though. Dr. Cathy Sabota, Urban Extension Horticulture Specialist at Alabama A&M University, has been working to develop water catchment systems homeowners, nurseries and food crop producers can use to roundhouse kick these monster droughts. Interested? I’ll bet you are.

Water catchment is a high-tech phrase for some wisely planned rainwater collection systems. It’s usually collected from roof tops, greenhouses and other relatively clean surfaces. More good news is that most homes already have gutters and downspouts (and the roof) for catchment. All they need is a water storage container, some piping and a pump. And it’s well worth the trouble. Here’s why.

The water catchment system at Oak Mountain State Park is used to irrigate the landscape around the park.

In the U.S., each person uses more than 100 gallons of water every day. A whopping 59 percent goes for things like washing cars, swimming, bathing and irrigating landscapes. Not only can rainwater harvesting help reduce some of this (and save you money), it also offers other benefits to the community like reduced storm water runoff and energy use.

"If only ten percent of Alabama households adopted water catchment systems," said Dr. Sabota, "residents could reduce the burden of water taken from our lakes and streams by eight BILLION gallons per year."

Demonstration water catchment system at Alabama A&M University.

That’s quite a lot of water!

The Alabama Cooperative Extension System’s Urban Affairs and New Nontraditional Programs Unit has a demonstration catchment at Alabama A&M University’s campus with a surface area of 144 square feet. From April to December 2007 (one of the driest years in Alabama history) that unit collected 1,983 gallons of water from just 22.24 inches of rain!

Another separate catchment system at Oak Mountain State Park is 440 square feet. One inch of rainfall will completely fill its 300 gallon tank. That one-inch of rainfall is enough to irrigate all of the entire landscape around the park office several times during the summer. And the entire system costs less than $400.

Got your attention now? I thought so. Want more information? Contact Dr. Cathy Sabota at P.O. Box 69, Normal, AL 35762, by e-mail at catherine.sabota@aamu.edu or call (256) 372-4257.

Jerry A. Chenault is the Urban Regional Extension Agent for Lawrence & Morgan Counties.