Rainwater on Tap: Drinking Local, By The Numbers
WMG’s Living Lab and Learning Center is quickly on its way to being a rainwater-fed campus—and letting the municipal water lines go dry. Utilizing 3,200 square feet of roof space across two buildings, we are collecting the abundant water that falls from the sky. Ten thousand gallons of this bounty is stored in an underground tank, with another 2,000 gallons held in above-ground cisterns.
For the past year, we’ve been using only rainwater and greywater to irrigate our lush landscape plants and food forest. And now, with the installation of a filtration system, we have rainwater on tap for drinking, cooking, and showering. This means we are off the water grid and meeting 100% of our indoor and outdoor needs with rainwater.
This is exciting stuff, to be sure. But rather than let emotion carry the story, we’ve done the math and created a detailed rainwater budget that lays out the hard data. (We are scientists, after all.) As you can see, the numbers show us operating at a water surplus for the year! (Continued on page 3)