Harvesting rainwater, shower water can help reduce water consumption
by Danielle Swanson
Daily-Tribune News

With a chance of showers today, David Munisteri may be getting more than just a drop in his bucket.
Munisteri, Cartersville resident and owner of HP Building Solutions, is installing a rainwater harvesting system, which, when complete, will collect rainwater runoff from his roof and store it in a tank for outdoor watering and other uses.

“Once you collect it, there’s a lot of things you can do with it,” said Munisteri. He said some people even pump the water from the system into their homes for use in toilets.

The collection system works by rain from the gutter spout being collected in a basin. The rain then goes through a filter and finally into a 500-gallon tank buried in Munisteri’s backyard, where it is stored until it is needed. Munisteri said he planned on using the water mainly for a drip irrigation system to water his lawn.

He said the water harvesting system is an additional service he wanted to offer customers and installed one in his own home to be able to provide first-hand knowledge.

“I looked at it several years ago when I bought the house. Now I own [my own] company. It still costs me, but I can use it as a learning experience,” Munisteri said, adding he believes in leading by experience. “I can’t very well tell somebody to conserve if I’m not doing it myself.”

Munisteri also said by implementing environmentally efficient products, he hopes to leave the world a better place. “If you look back in history, as the water quality has depreciated, the quality of life has also depreciated,” he said. “If I conserve water there may be water for someone else.”

While many like Munisteri are beginning to implement water conservation methods, Bartow County Water Department Superintendent Gene Camp said the county still has a ways to go before reaching the 10 percent drop in water usage the governor mandated for all utilities in the state.

“Our October usage was down 3.5 percent from October of last year,” Camp said. “If you factor in growth and the fact we’ve been supplying water to some folks we don’t normally supply water to, that’s a pretty good decrease.”

Camp said the County is supplying water to some other municipalities, such as Kingston, and had added a number of people normally on wells, including nearly 20 in the last month alone.“It’s going to be tough,” Camp said of reaching the required drop. “We’ve got to get there one way or another.”

Camp said if the county did not reach the 10 percent by November, the department would have to begin looking at additional ways to decrease usage. “We don’t want to impact business unless we have to,” he said. “We have to be sure people have water.” The department, which serves about 56,000 people, may have to eventually consider water rationing if things fail to improve. Camp said the only way to ration would be severe fines for users who go over set limits.

Many people in the area, Camp said, are following the complete ban on total outdoor watering. However, at least six citations had been issued since the warning was removed “A majority of people realize what kind of situation we’re in,” Camp said, adding many are implementing conservation methods on their own. “When you conserve water, you conserve energy and you save money.”

While encouraging users to conserve on their own, as part of the 16- county North Metropolitian Georgia Water District the department has also implemented system-wide measures recommended by the district’s water conservation plan to decrease usage.

Both Cartersville and Bartow County use a conservation rate system, which requires high water users to pay more per gallon after a certain level. Camp said the county has been using the current system for about two years, but will soon be using drought response rates, elevating the current conservation rates.
“One of the big concerns all the districts have is leaks,” said Grace Trimble, spokesperson for NMGWD. She said all of the counties have began working on finding leaks.

According to NMGWD’s 2006 Plan Implementation Questionnaire results, both Bartow County and Cartersville have ongoing leak detection and repair programs in place.

“Internally we’ve upped our efforts to find leaks and get them repaired,” said Camp, adding the department tries to repair leaks as soon as possible regardless of size. He said the department now has employees working 24 hours a day, seven days a week to cover such issues.

In addition, the county is also distributing educational information, such as do-it-yourself household water assessment brochures, and is supplying, free of charge, retrofit kits for customers whose homes were built before 1993. “We’re practicing what we preach,” said Camp. “I have a bucket in my shower to catch water for my wife to water plants.”

Camp said large industries which use water, such as Georgia Power’s Plant Bowen, Shaw Industries and Anheuser Busch, are also doing their part in conserving. “The business industry learned a long time ago that conserving water and power effects their bottom line,” he said.

While Web sites such as www.conservewatergeorgia.net offer a variety of tips and techniques for residents to conserve water, Camp said the biggest thing home owners can do is look at their toilets.
According to a report from the NMGWD, single-family and multi-family residences make up about 55 percent of water usage in the average district. Of the single-family usage, almost a quarter of the water goes to toilets, 4 percent more than is used for outdoor watering during a normal year.

For homes built before 1993, low flow tanks make a dramatic reduction —sometimes almost 5 gallons per flush— in the amount of water flushed each time.

Trimble said one simple test to see if tanks are leaking is to put food dye in the tank.
“If that turns the water in the bowl, the tank is leaking into the bowl,” Trimble said. “That’s an easy fix that the homeowner can do.”

Other tips for conserving water include:

• Never pour water down the drain. Instead find another use for it.
• Repair dripping faucets by replacing washers.
• Check all plumbing for leaks and have them repaired.
• Retrofit all household faucets by installing aerators with flow restrictors.