This morning I am coming to you from chilly, almost freezing sunny Las Vegas where I will be attending the National Ground Water Conference this week. Over some Fajitas a couple of folks interested in water conservation started talking to me about their vision for new homes to all come with their own storm water collection system and water purification plant that would make clean, safe drinking water out of collected rain and storm water.
This is keeping in line with the many survivalist/naturalist/sustainability advocates that seem to be popping up like mushrooms everywhere you look. In any case, from a technical perspective, this can easily be done. Unfortunately both the cost and the legal hurdles one would have to overcome to begin building homes with individual water treatment and collection systems, under current conditions would be too costly to ever be a practical solution.
People come up with a lot of ideas about water which they excitedly believe are the answer to man’s water struggles. On closed examination when we consider the weight of water, and the very low cost we as consumers pay for our water, these energetic ideas quickly fall apart.
However, as an exercise, over the next few days I am going to put together a couple theoretical single-home, and community-based water purification systems that would allow residents to have control over the purification process that goes into their drinking water. The concept sounds interesting, so let’s take a look at the actual issues involved with doing such a thing.
Stay Tuned!
