As America’s expanding urban areas struggle with major water supply shortages and runoff pollution problems, capturing rainwater from rooftops provides a tremendous untapped opportunity to increase water supply and improve water quality, according to a recent analysis on Capturing Rainwater from Rooftops by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
By capturing hundreds of millions of gallons of rainfall, residents of these communities would obtain inexpensive onsite water supplies for non-potable uses, such as yard watering and toilet flushing, and would lower energy costs associated with treating and delivering drinkable-quality water. It would also reduce the street litter such as styrofoam, plastic, and paper; yard waste such as grass clippings , tree trimmings, and leaves; and pet waste that gets washed into local waterways during the rainfall.
The NRDC report illustrates opportunities for capturing, treating and supplying harvested rainwater for non-potable purposes in Atlanta, Ga.; Austin, Texas; Chicago, Ill.; Denver, Colo.; Fort Myers, Fla.; Kansas City, Mo.; Madison, Wis.; and Washington, D.C. Several success stories also demonstrate the effectiveness of rooftop rainwater capture for new construction in New York, N.Y., and redeveloped buildings in Santa Monica, Calif.
The report comes as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is in the process of updating its national standards for controlling runoff pollution from new development and existing paved areas. NRDC encourages the agency to adopt national standards for on-site stormwater retention that will increase green infrastructure approaches such as rainwater harvesting. As a result, communities can effectively transform polluted runoff flowing to our waterways into captured rooftop rainwater used as an on-site water supply resource.
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