Brown Blog #3

We are nearing the end of our service learning project. Today we glued our model home and gutter system together. The glue should be hard enough to hold together the building and waterproof enough to hold the model “rain”. I wrote a few short questions for the high schoolers to ponder before they arrived at the demonstration. These questions were as follows:

1. What water conservation methods are you aware of?

2. What are the benefits of water collection?

These are quite basic and easily answered questions, but hopefully this will spark some curiosity to get their brains going before they visit. Our main goal is not just to show them how a gutter system works, as we hope they already understand this, but more importantly to educate them on the benefits of water collection, both environmentally and economically. We understand that most likely, none of these high school students are going to go home and beg for a rain collection barrel for Christmas. But maybe, somewhere in their subconscious, we can make a small impression on the reasons for and benefits from water collection.

During lab today, a professor told us how his mother collects and reuses water, both from the rain and from household uses. She lives in Southern California, where water is expensive and in short supply. Being from New England, I have never experienced a drought in the way Southern California does. I do realize that technically, we have been in a drought this fall in Vermont, but you wouldn’t know it from observing our lifestyle. Not a lot of changes in the Northeast when a drought occurs. Unfortunately, this inattentiveness to the changes around us can lead to groundwater depletion from wells, which can cause other environmental issues. I believe everyone, no matter where they are, or what their droughts are like, should follow the methods used by people living in dry places. Just because water is available does not mean it should be wasted.

There are a few issues with reducing runoff by using rain collection barrels. One problem is snow. We realize that during the freeze up of winter, the amount of water collected will decrease to almost nothing. This will change in spring, when the snow and ice on the roof melts. We acknowledged this but would like to note that this shouldn’t affect runoff, as the precipitation is stuck on the roof in solid form. Once the spring melt occurs, the water should be collected. And since the original goal of the rain barrels is to reduce runoff, as long as the snow doesn’t melt at a high rate, runoff should be able to be moderated. The large runoff and flooding problems that occur in the spring often are caused by a frozen ground. What happens is the ground is frozen, becoming essentially impervious. Sometimes, the air can be warm enough for rain while the ground is still frozen. This rain runs directly over the surface, along with the snowmelt it causes. Since the ground is frozen, this water does not absorb, and floods lowlands and overflows streams and rivers.