Sunday, June 06, 2004
SIMPLE PLEASURES
A 1999 World Bank - United Nations Development Program report called "Learning What Works" strongly criticized mega-projects and called for small technologies and community control of water.
People in the United States drink over 2.5 billion gallons of bottled water each year, an amount equal to a single days' rainfall on the side of one mountain in Hawaii.
The resource and the need exist side by side. The RainCatcher is a small mountain placed in the path of the coming rainy season. Instead of one big mountain, the idea is to scatter thousands and thousands of little ones over an entire continent. All these small efforts add up to the same result: billions of gallons of life-giving water.
Like the yurt, like the circus tent, the RainCatcher is set up in a day by the people who will be harvesting the water. The cost is minimal. Materials needed: some rope, tarps and tent poles, and as many plastic water tanks as can be rounded up. For a while, more rain will fall than we will be able to catch, but our goal is to catch enough in each region so that everyone can enjoy, year round, the simple pleasure of a clean glass of water.
People in the United States drink over 2.5 billion gallons of bottled water each year, an amount equal to a single days' rainfall on the side of one mountain in Hawaii.
The resource and the need exist side by side. The RainCatcher is a small mountain placed in the path of the coming rainy season. Instead of one big mountain, the idea is to scatter thousands and thousands of little ones over an entire continent. All these small efforts add up to the same result: billions of gallons of life-giving water.
Like the yurt, like the circus tent, the RainCatcher is set up in a day by the people who will be harvesting the water. The cost is minimal. Materials needed: some rope, tarps and tent poles, and as many plastic water tanks as can be rounded up. For a while, more rain will fall than we will be able to catch, but our goal is to catch enough in each region so that everyone can enjoy, year round, the simple pleasure of a clean glass of water.
