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MONTEREY PENINSULA WATER MANAGEMENT DISTRICT BOARD

From the Monterey County Herald
Serving Monterey County and the Salinas Valley

June 24, 2002

By DENNIS MORAN
dmoran@montereyherald.com

While Monterey Peninsula water officials study and debate the source and size of new water supplies, old and new technologies are vying to stretch what we have.

Local enthusiasts are talking up two such technologies, one tried-and-true through recorded time, the other still being tested.

Rain-storage cisterns have been around since ancient times, often proving crucial to the survival of cultures in dry Mediterranean and Middle Eastern climates. Where rainfall is scarce, it can pay to save what you get. But cisterns also have been common sights in rain-plentiful areas such as the Midwest.

So why are they not more plentiful in the water-challenged Monterey Peninsula? That's a question that vexes William "Woody" Woodworth, who has had a home cistern system since the 1970s. There are, he notes, successful cistern systems in Carmel Valley and Pebble Beach. Were there more in use, however, the Peninsula wouldn't be nearly so up in arms about water, he says.

"Cistern" is just a fancy name for any sort of container that holds water. Also needed is a catchment area - a roof does pretty nicely - and gutters or pipes to collect from the catchment and direct to the cistern. A simple enough concept for ancient cultures from the Greeks to the Incas, but, Woodworth chides, apparently beyond the grasp of most modern-day Peninsulans. He'd particularly like to see schools use them.

Woodworth, a Monterey Peninsula Water Management District board member from 1978-83 and retired Air Force meteorologist, has about 10 cisterns neatly tucked under the eaves of his Pacific Grove home. Together they hold a few thousand gallons of water collected from his and his neighbors' roofs - most of that, of course, from the winter.

He uses the water for landscaping and for birds, he says, and that's how most cistern systems are used locally. Household uses depend on the cleanliness of the catchment area and how the water is treated.

Woodworth contributed his knowledge of cisterns and "ponding" - home reservoirs - to a booklet, "Captured Rainfall," published in 1981 by the state Department of Water Resources. The booklet contains information on such topics as the best roof materials to use, how to build cisterns and filtration and treatment systems. In the booklet, Woodworth says the system he had at the time - he's added to it since - cost him about $600.

"A lot of people believe in it, but it's been pooh-poohed because people think we're going to get something bigger" in the way of water supplies, Woodworth says.

Neither the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District nor Peninsula supplier California-American Water Co. offer incentives for the installation of cisterns. Both offer a variety of incentives, such as cash rebates or free equipment, for water-saving devices such as low-flow toilets and other plumbing fixtures.

"We obviously encourage it, but right now we don't have any incentives" for installing cisterns, water district water demand manager Stephanie Pintar says. But she adds that the "time is ripe for consideration" of such incentives.

Water board member Dave Potter ups the ante: "I don't know why we don't make cisterns mandatory" for new construction, he says. A builder himself, he says cisterns are "not hard to incorporate into new construction," or even remodelling jobs.

Woodworth has been pitching the ancient technology of cisterns for 25 years, and now comes a trio of entrepreneurs who wish to introduce a new technology to the conservation mix: a vacuum distillation unit that can, its maker says, take a home's "gray water" - what goes down the drain from showers and sinks - and make it cleaner than the water coming out of the tap.

The machine is an adaptation of technology that Australian businessman David Murdoch has been using for industrial purposes. San Jose computer consultant Mick O'Halloran asked that it be adapted for home use for a personal project, and from there the two men came up with the idea of marketing a home unit for use in isolated areas or areas with short water supplies. With the right go-aheads, the Monterey Peninsula may become the test-market site, after tests in isolated homes in the Sierra.

Carmel Valley businesswoman Nilda Argandoña hopes to market the contraption locally - and she hopes it will help save others from water-waiting lists that led her to sell, at a loss, Pebble Beach property for which she waited six years for water to build.

With one of the units, anticipated to cost between $15,000 and $19,000, a home could recycle most of its water indefinitely, needing only small supplements, its marketers say. That would be especially true if the home in question were to separately install a waterless toilet, they add.

But even if the machine clears regulatory hurdles for home use, it would then need to prove and quantify its water savings if it's to earn water credits that could be used for home or business expansions, Pintar says.

Dennis Moran can be reached at 646-4348.