June/July
2004
What Falls from
the Sky: Harvesting Rainwater for Community Gardens
By Lenny Librizzi
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Gardeners
distribute rainwater. Courtesy L. Librizzi. |
If there is one thing that most urban dwellers
take for granted, it is water. You turn on the tap and a seemingly endless,
inexpensive supply of fresh water is available for washing, cooking,
drinking and watering plants. After using it the water goes down the
drain and we forget about it.
This misconception was shattered for community gardeners in late spring
of 2002, when it became clear that community gardens were facing a crisis.
A drought emergency had been declared, and it became necessary for NYC’s
Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to restrict access to the
municipal water supply. For the first time in 20 years, community gardeners
were denied permission to use fire hydrants, which for most gardeners
serve as the primary source for watering plants.
As a response, community gardening and environmental organizations collaborated
to form the Water Resource Group (WRG) to help gardeners survive the
drought crisis. Founding members, the Council on the Environment of
New York City (CENYC) and Green Thumb, hatched a plan that involved
teaching water conservation practices, helping gardeners understand
DEP’s drought restrictions, identifying alternate water sources,
building rainwater harvesting demonstration sites in community gardens,
and cooperating with other greening organizations.
As the group’s focus expanded, they began to realize the critical
role rainwater harvesting (RWH) plays in protecting local waterways.
Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs), caused by heavy storm water runoff,
is NYC’s most serious local water pollution problem. Catching
rainwater using RWH systems and returning it to the earth—thereby
keeping it out of the sewer system—is vitally important to preserving
local water quality.
Through the work of gardeners and the WRG, community gardens serve as
grassroots educational resources. Educating citizens to conserve water
is the cheapest, most effective way to increase the amount of water
available for human use. It is also a matter of regaining community
control over natural resources. NYC’s community gardeners are
taking a lead in the movement towards sustainable urban water management.
By working to increase community connections with water, citizens will
all become better stewards of our water supply. Consider the amount
of municipal water saved by conservation efforts instituted in the past
10 years: 200 million gallons per day—a significant amount compared
with the average New York City family household’s use of 100,000
gallons annually.
Building the systems has also had many side benefits. Community gardeners
and neighborhood residents are being educated about their water supply,
where it comes from and how it gets to their faucets. The captured rainwater
is stored in tanks where the amount of water remaining in the tank is
visible.
Three summer interns, Nava (Israeli), Mohammed (Palestinian) and Kelly
(American) from the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies built
three of the systems in the Bronx during the summer of 2002. As Nava
said, “A Palestinian, an American and an Israeli went into a community
garden in the South Bronx…it sounds like the beginning of a joke?
Well it isn’t. This is the real truth and the start of a very
interesting experience.”
A participatory design project led by a landscape design intern, Sara
Cohen, from New Yorkers for Parks at Prospect Heights Community Farm,
a 8,400 square foot ornamental and vegetable community garden in Brooklyn,
allowed community gardeners to learn about rainwater harvesting and
water usage and to help design their water harvesting system. During
the design process, the gardeners learned that they would be able to
collect about 300 gallons of water in a one-inch rainfall or about 6,150
gallons during the May to October growing season. Much discussion took
place about how much water would be needed and ways to supply all of
their watering needs from the RWH system. The gardeners explored various
types of drip irrigation systems and water conservation techniques.
In October 2003, gardeners and community members built the system in
three days with technical assistance from CENYC staff.
Together, the 20 community garden sites that have rainwater harvesting
systems collect approximately 250,000 gallons during the growing season.
Some sites utilize recycled olive barrels for water storage connected
together so that they all are filled and emptied through one faucet.
Other sites use single large Polyethylene tanks ranging in size from
300 to 1,000 gallons. The sites are low-tech, the most complex part
being a water faucet. Water is collected from casitas or sheds in the
garden or from adjacent rooftops. The sites are located in all five
boroughs of New York City in a variety of neighborhoods.
During the summer of 2003, an Americorps team from New York Restoration
Project received training in RWH building design and building techniques
and constructed 10 systems with the gardeners over the course of the
summer. Community events were held at many of the sites. At the First
Quincy Community Garden, the Brooklyn Borough President, Marty Markowitz,
attended the opening ceremony. Some of the events were WRG sponsored
workshops related to water conservation, and RWH system design and building.
Educational signs have been made and a companion brochure was printed
to increase each garden’s capacity to educate local residents
and passersby. A research team collected data to better understand how
the systems are used, and what motivates gardeners to use rainwater.
Through these surveys, community gardeners shared their enthusiasm and
previous experiences with rainwater harvesting. Some described growing
up in countries where bamboo was used as a gutter on the sides of their
homes to catch rain for domestic use, and others described vivid memories
of large family cisterns kept clean by a certain type of fish. Many
shared their belief that rainwater was better for their plants. Based
on these surveys and comments from gardeners and others, improvements
to the design including new barrel connectors and first flush systems
have been implemented.
Now thanks to the WRG and New York City community gardeners this practice
is being used in developed urban areas. As Mary Sciales, NYC schoolteacher
and community gardener from the PS 4 Paradise community garden in East
New York Brooklyn, said about her system, “This is great, just
opening the faucet on this tank. Why didn’t they think of this
before?”
Indeed.
Lenny Librizzi (plantlot@rcn.com) is the Assistant
Director of the Open Space Greening Program at the Council on the Environment
of New York City and one of the founding members of the Water Resources
Group. For more information on rainwater harvesting, here are some good
places to start: www.eng.warwick.ac.uk/DTU/rwh/index.html;
www.rainwaterharvesting.org.
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