Saturday, August 8, 2009

Rain Water Harvesting Has Become Necessary

We live in a small town in north central Texas. This little town was grossly mismanaged for many years. They were breaking all kinds of water and waste water laws. When they got caught, guess who had to pay to fix it. That's right the humble citizens of the little town. We are mostly middle middle class. No one is wealthy. This last month our water bill went up 45% and the sewage fees went up 85%. Now my family is able to absorb this ridiculous cost, but what about the elderly? What about those who have lost jobs? Seriously, they are kicking the people while they are down.

I have installed two rain barrels this year. I have about a 185 gallon per rain event capacity and plan on adding another three barrels for another 190 gallons soon. I have been doing this to be good to the planet and good to my plants. Now, I am seeing that this may be much much more important than all that. It may be a matter of being able to continuing to garden during dry times. Between rain water harvesting, gray water reuse and a seriously heavy layer of mulch over everything, I have managed not to increase out water use over the summer months. Even with these measures, our water bill was $55 higher than last month.

The question now is how to get this message out to the others in my community?