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hunter

(39,712 posts)
4. California residents are allowed to capture rainwater.
Sun Aug 14, 2022, 11:02 AM
Aug 2022

Furthermore, certain kinds of gray water systems can be installed without permit.

I've occasionally experimented with water from our washing machine in our garden, but not recently. I don't feel guilty about the water that goes down the drain. Sewage is recycled here into near-potable and potable water. The near-potable water is used on certain high value crops and for groundwater recharge. Some of it is further treated by reverse osmosis, etc., to make high quality potable water. This sort of recycling costs less and uses less energy than desalinating ocean water.

Most new construction here, which is generally built on farmland or old industrial sites, now includes catchments that hold runoff from roofs, roads, and parking lots, allowing rainwater time to percolate into the ground.

Catching rainwater is something that can be accomplished at any scale, from a small single family home to a huge apartment complex.

One of the problems in California is ridiculously high property values. Developers don't like "wasting" valuable land for catchment basins. There's a large new shopping center in a city near us that has the catchment basins underneath the parking lots. That wasn't cheap!

The problem of runoff from roads and parking lots will be much less severe in the future when we finally get our shit together and abandon car culture, rebuilding our cities in such a way that most people can't be bothered to own a car.

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