Going against the flow: 
Experiment traps rainwater runoff to ease water shortage

By Beth Daley
Globe Staff

Late in a parched summer, in a town bound by severe water restrictions, Jim Fitzgerald turns on his hose as often as he likes, for as long as he likes.  As his neighbors' lawns wither, he can sprinkle his tomato plants or wash his car at will.  

Fitzgerald's water comes from two new, 400-gallon cisterns partially buried in his lawn, filled with rainwater shed by his roof during recent storms.  He can't drink it, but the water is clean enough to top off his pool.  And soon he will be joined by 39 other Bellingham homeowners in a grand experiment designed to trap rain, the oldest source of fresh water in the world.  

The idea is intended to fix a problem as old as the suburbs: Communities channel rainwater out of town so efficiently they're drying themselves out.

"Suburban and urban developments are designed to shed water," said Bob Zimmerman, executive director of the Charles River Watershed Association.  

The group is financing the project, one of the nation's first, with a portion of a $1.3 million settlement it negotiated with a local power plant that uses ground water to cool equipment.  At $3,000 each to install, the systems aren't cheap, but the watershed group hopes other communities will start to subsidize their own or the association's - version of the program.  The association is even manufacturing the cistern systems, called SmartStorm, itself. 

"We aren't putting water back into the ground and at the same time we are taking more water out of it.  We have a ground water drought dating to 1999.  Even during heavy snows and rain, it hasn't been replenished," Zimmerman said.

Ground water for many suburbs is what the Quabbin Reservoir is to Boston: The main source of water.  In Bellingham, as in scores of other towns, most water comes from town wells.  Those wells rely almost exclusively on ground water, which is replenished by rain.  

But suburban communities are designed with sloping lawns, storm drains, and wide gutters - all of which send water rushing straight out of town.  A recent rainstorm in Bellingham illustrates the problem.  The rain flowed off roofs, onto lawns, down driveways, into streets, and into storm drains.  By the next day the rain had stopped and there was hardly a puddle to be found.  If all the asphalt weren't there, the water would be absorbed into the ground, naturally filtered and keeping ground water tables high.

The problem is far from suburbia's alone, and can cost taxpayers vast amounts of money.  Cities where the ground is largely paved over with asphalt and concrete, send virtually all their water down drains.  Many of the older city storm drains are combined with sewage pipes- or leak into them.  The mixing of drain systems means that a huge amount of usable rainwater is processed as sewage.  The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, which treats waste from 43 communities and ships it 9.5 miles out to sea, estimates more than 50 percent of all the water it treats is clean.

During storms, that rainwater so overwhelms the MWRA's new Deer Island Treatment facility that sewage is still occasionally released into Boston Harbor and the Charles River.  Hundreds of millions of dollars is being spent trying to solve the problem, either by separating sewer and storm pipes or building more scrubbing stations to wash water clean.

"The more local you keep it, the less it flows through gutters, down city streets and sidewalks, and the cleaner it is," said Bruce Berman of Save The Harbor/Save The Bay.  

The state's Executive Office of Environmental Affairs is also trying to come up with ways to "keep water local."  Intel in Hudson uses ground water for manufacturing and the company has put up $1.5 million to support ground water recharge projects in the Assabet River Watershed.  The US Environmental Protection Agency even held a contest for landscape architects recently to design picturesque ways to keep water on people's property, from Japanese gardens to porous bricks.

At Fitzgerald's house, the town green plastic cisterns half-buried in the backyard are far from high tech.  When it rains, the roof's water drains to a downspout that connects to the cisterns.  Not all the water is pristine; the first several gallons may be carrying bird or other waste from critters on the roof, but a device allows that water to drain away.  The rest - hundreds of gallons even during a small rainstorm - flows into the cisterns.  A hose is attached to them and Fitzgerald only has to turn it on to get water for the lawn or to top off the pool.  If the cistern fills up, the overflow pours into a dry well in the yard to replenish the ground water.

Fitzgerald, who works at the Charles River Watershed Association, is still trying to work out the kinks before the other 39 homes are chosen in Bellingham.  The association wants to pick homes within the next two weeks in a cluster to measure the effect it has on water tables and storm drains.

 "It doesn't take up a lot of room.  We'll still play softball out back in the yard," said Fitzgerald, as he stood above the cisterns.  "I wanted to be part of this: I wanted to help solve the problem.  And it's free water."