TUCSON, Ariz.- Brad Lancaster, is the kind of person that makes Mother Nature smile. Actually, he’s probably one of her favorites.

Lancaster is an eco-minded engineer whose home is set up to catch and use every drop of rainwater that pours from the sky.

“It all goes around and around in a great way,” said Lancaster from his greened-out 1/8-acre property near downtown Tucson.



The Lancaster residence uses harvested rainwater and greywater —the water that comes from many household drains—for landscaping, watering plants grown for food, and maintaining their composting toilet, causing them to dip into city water supply for only one-fifth of the water they need.

Plus, the home is completely disconnected from city electricity—the disconnected wires are still hanging from a conduit on the roof, left exposed as proof the house runs solely on solar power.

At the Lancaster home, aluminum channels on the roof funnel all rainwater into a 1,200-gallon cistern—which doubles as a fence, artistic canvas, shade producer and a fire protector. That cistern’s rainwater, along with greywater from the bathroom sink, tub, shower and washing machine, is used to water all the trees, plants and herbs growing in the yard.

There are eight solar panels to soak up the sun during the day and batteries to store the power overnight. Cooking is done in a solar-powered oven and water is heated with a solar-powered water heater.

Chickens, strategically placed on the end of the yard to cancel out noise from the street, provide more nitrogen for plants, create fodder for nearby bees, help increase honey production, and, of course, will be food for the Lancasters in the near future.

“If you’re gonna eat meat, you gotta know where it comes from!” said Lancaster, as the chickens, all of which are named after Mexican foods, pecked around his feet.

This is all part of Lancaster’s mission to lead by example.

He believes that harvesting rainwater is one solution to the growing water shortage in Tucson.

Tucson, said Lancaster, has “set up a system that is designed to drain the rainwater out of the system as quickly as possible. So we’re literally dehydrating Tucson. We get 12 inches of rain a year. We’re lucky if even one actually infiltrates the soil.”

The rainwater harvesting techniques that turned Lancaster’s home into a lush paradise can be used around town to recharge groundwater supplies, said Lancaster.


For example, before Lancaster, along with his brother, Rodd, and other neighbors, made changes to their street curbs to allow water to flow into trees along the right-of-way on his property, the street was draining a million gallons of run-off rainwater per mile, per year. Now, a lot of that water is used for trees that help shade and cool the street.

“So we can tweak our city’s infrastructure so we can direct that run-off not down the street but into street-side tree basins,” said Lancaster.

Shaded streets would contribute to lower temperatures and people wouldn’t have to run their air conditioners as much, he said.

“We would create the cool island effect instead of the hot island effect,” said Lancaster. “That would reduce energy consumption and take care of flooding while greening and beautifying the neighborhood, improving air quality and growing food right outside folks’ doors.”

The Lancasters are also practicing many water-saving techniques.

“We’re using far less than the average American. We’re using less than 20 gallons per person, per day,” said Lancaster. According to Mitch Basefsky, a public information officer at Tucson Water, the average Tucsonan uses from 110 to 150 gallons of water per person, per day.

That’s less than Tucsonans were using in the mid-1970s said Basefsky. Since water conservation movements in the '70s, along with an increase in water prices, the residential water usage has dropped by about 25 percent.

Good thing, because Tucson is nearing a decade of drought conditions and many are worried about the potential over-allocation of the Colorado River, a large source of water for Arizona, said Basefsky.

Water shortages are being reported all over the United States. The U.S. National Climatic Data Center’s September 2007 review found that about 71 percent of the contiguous United States is in moderate to extreme drought, with 28 percent in the severe to extreme category. Only 9 percent was classified as severely to extremely wet.

The southeastern United States is in a major drought. Orange County is putting treated sewage water to work to replenish a diminishing groundwater supply, and El Paso, Texas, has built the largest desalination plant in the United States to remove minerals from poor quality water which is their main source of water in order to deal with drought. Basefsky said all of these places had to make major changes to face a looming water shortage crisis.

Conserving resources and living efficiently is Lancaster’s passion and occupation. He’s written one book, “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands, Volume 1,” and is working on two more volumes to help teach the concepts of rainwater harvesting and avoid a water crisis.

Lancaster’s books and workshops are starting to grab Tucsonans' intrests.

“Brad is a great example of how much more efficient people can be,” said Basefsky of Lancaster.

“He’s obviously a very committed person,” said Joe Gelt, an editor at the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center. “This is his way of life and it’s very admirable.”

“It’s really starting to spread all over town but I see it around here a lot,” said Lancaster pointing to the house across the street and next to him. Both neighbors are in the process of digging basins for street-side trees and making curb cuts to allow rainwater to flow into them.

Hopefully, said Lancaster, more and more neighbors and city officials will take on the challenge of rainwater harvesting.

“We need to change our paradigm,” he said, enjoying the shade of his desert ironwood tree. “We have to create a storm water control system so that the storm water is not drainage, it’s harvested. And we have to transform the city from a drain to a sponge.”