Dialogue — “Water for Everyone”

Water for Everyone
The RainCatcher story — Dialogue between a boy and a girl, somewhere in the United States.

by Jack Rose

What if the only water we had to drink came out of the L.A. River?

Or Laguna Creek? or any creek?

What if we lived In Africa and had to walk for hours everyday just to bring water from muddy streams back to our house?

What if we got typhoid or cholera. . . or dysentery?

What if 5 million of us died this year from drinking bad water?

Every year!

What if someone decided this was unacceptable?

What if we started to catch the rain that fell on our school house?

And channeled it through gutters.

And stored it in giant water tanks?

It isn’t rocket science, is it?

But NASA wants billions of dollars to look for water on Mars.

And then during recess, instead of walking a mile or two down the canyon to get a drink from that funky stream. . .

We just opened the tap on the tank outside our classroom and took a big gulp of the best water we’ve ever tasted.

What if all the thirsty kids around the world could do this?

What if the $20 million spent on one military tank was used to buy 40 thousand water tanks?

Then all the thirsty kids around the world would have fresh rainwater to drink instead of the contaminated stuff.

What if we could make that happen?

We can. My friends and I are helping the RainCatcher project right now in Africa.

How?

It’s easy. The people there really want clean water to drink, but they don’t have the right rain catching tools.

Water tanks – rain gutters – filters. It’s just a matter of hardware.

Yea – so the RainCatcher project is setting up the Global Hardware Store.

We are helping to buy the supplies and getting the RainCatchers set up, and before you know it, an entire village is drinking the good stuff.

What if everyone could do this?

We’re working on that.

The goal of RainCatcher is ‘Water for Everyone’

I’ll drink to that.

RainCatcher — water for California and beyond

Water for California

I have a solution to California’s, and the world’s, water woes. It’s called the RainCatcher.

In California, and throughout the Western U.S., the demand for water is rapidly outpacing supply. Current and future water needs for home and business owners, as well as for agriculture and industry, is so great that state government is desperately searching for new sources to tap, including adding six feet to the height of Shasta Dam. Massive, centralized infrastructure projects, paid for by increasing taxes and water bills, will not come close to meeting the relentless thirst of an ever expanding population. It is clear that for the next many decades, water will be the defining issue for California and the neighboring western states. What if every house in California caught and stored 10,000 gallons of water each season? That would add up to billions of gallons that wouldn’t have to be imported and purchased.

The California RainCatcher project will demonstrate how easy it is for homes; commercial and industrial buildings; municipal and public structures (office buildings, parking structures, etc) to be converted into rainwater collection centers. In this way each new and existing building can become a valuable source of water for landscaping. This would save billions of gallons each year. The water is free. Catching rain is easy. And plants love it, finding it preferable to chlorinated municipal water. Woodie Guthrie sang, “California is the Garden of Eden”. RainCatcher aims to nourish that garden by developing a new relationship with an old resource: rain. As with the installations we are doing in Africa, once a RainCatcher is in place, when the rains come no one is complaining, everyone is grateful. One at a time, as people get the concept of catching and using rainwater, the first question posed is, “I wonder why we waited so long to do this?” The wait is over, Raincatcher is here.

Where To Start

I am producing the first RainCatcher prototype for use along the coast of Northern California. My rainwater harvesting system will benefit both Californians and people in developing nations. Here’s how people in America can help their counterparts in Africa: Convert your house, garage or new building into a RainCatcher structure and 10% of the cost will go into the World RainCatcher Capital Pool. For every $1,000 spent on collecting rain here, $100 will go to setting up RainCatchers in Africa, where millions of people lack a consistent, clean source of water for drinking and irrigation. Each RainCatcher in America can help create a beneficiary RainCatcher house, school or medical clinic in Africa. This abundant resource will not only be enjoyed by millions here, but also shared with millions in developing countries. We have the capability of providing ample clean water for our own families and for others worldwide.

Manufacturers in Nairobi are making the tents and tanks needed for catching and storing rainwater for drinking and irrigation: Kentainers makes water storage tanks; Tarpo makes the RainCatcher tents.

Let it rain!

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.