TAKE The  Water Pledge

I pledge to…

 

1. Conserve water by using water saving devices and fixing leaks promptly.

2. Let my yard act as a giant sponge and avoid creating new paved areas.

3. Dispose of household waste responsibly by never dumping wastes or hazardous liquids down a storm drain or on the ground.

4. Help to keep woody plants on steep slopes and along creek banks and lake shorelines to stave off erosion.

5. Set up a rain harvesting system at my home and install graywater recycling devices.

6. Seek to publicly retain wetlands and keep buildings off the floodplains.

7. Protect local creeks and rivers by participating in local shoreline cleanups while supporting state and federal clean water legislation.

8. Seek out cleaning products that are non-toxic and make sure I’m not dumping phosphates into the ecosystem.

9. Reduce the need for pesticides and fertilizers in and around my home.

10. Test my well water annually for coliform bacteria, nitrates and heavy metals.

11. Wash my car at a car wash as it uses 12 to 15 gallons as opposed to washing it at home where it takes 25 to 100 gallons.

12. Support local government efforts to protect water resources and support rainwater harvesting and graywater technologies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We Invite You to Contact Us

Rainwater  Filters

Rainwater Products

Storage Tanks

Graywater Products

Ap Rainwater Harvesting & Graywater GARDEns

Providing Innovative Green Solutions For All Your Water Needs

YOUR WATER SECURITY IS ESSENTIAL

Rain is a newly rediscovered and sustainable source of fresh water for both residential and commercial projects. Rain harvesting is the capture, diversion and storage of rainwater. When done correctly, rainwater harvesting provides a means of supplying a dependable water source for non-potable applications such as landscape irrigation or non-potable household uses such as laundry or use in flushing the toilet, which constitutes 40% to 60% of all water used nationwide for residential use and even more for most commercial applications.

 

There is a way to avoid the water shortages of tomorrow and that way is rainwater harvesting combined with innovative graywater gardens. New technologies and creative harvesting techniques can be implemented to create new sources of water, conserve existing water usage, and purify pollutants from storm water runoff. These technologies are not only environmentally sound, but cost-effective on a wide range of levels that can ultimately save individuals and communities a lot of money.

 

Bottom line, knowing you have access to clean water is essential to security . Atmospheric water generation adds a whole other factor. It provides the essential link between the air we breath and the water we drink. Water is essential for life to thrive. Call us today and we’ll make sure you are prepared for the future and secure in the present.

Thank you for visiting our site. We hope you found it informational and interesting enough to stimulate your own imagination when it comes to the water possibilities in your own backyard. Remember, water is life!

DATE:       January 12, 2010

 

TO :             Dept. of Water Resources 5-Year Strategic Plan

 

FROM:      David Ortiz/Kym Trippsmith

                    AP Rainwater Harvesting & Graywater Gardens

 

RE:              Dept of Water Resources 5-Year Strategic Plan                                                        

 

We recommend the following considerations:

 

1. Foster the communitization of water rather than commoditization by working to promote local solutions to water scarcity issues and opposing water privatization. Access to clean drinking water is a human right and should not be reliant or beholden to the profit interests of a handful of multi-national corporations, private contractors, and corporate agribusiness.

2. Recognize that water is a public natural resource; private contractors should not be able to receive subsidized water and be empowered to resell it at all-time-high profit levels, thereby making money off of taxpayer money on a public resource.

3. Learn from mistakes made in the past (in Stockton and Santa Cruz County, for example) where private water companies such as Monterey California American Water, preferred to make high profits rather than provide maintenance and repair to water infrastructure (which allows millions of gallons of water to be lost to leaks and breaks), fostered increases in water contamination, provided shoddy and delayed customer service, and increased water bills by up to $1300%. Public utilities are subject to public pressure; private companies only respond to the profit motive. Bottom line, public services should not be privatized.

4. A tax should be levied on all private contractors that exploit public natural resources for personal and corporate profit to help provide financial assistance for environmental remediation and groundwater recharge.

5. Oppose SB1759 on the grounds that it creates a free pass for the Bureau of Reclamation and CVP contractors to resell taxpayer funded water and by-pass present laws designed to protect the environment and repair some of the environmental damage caused by the project. This bill is a give away to water privateers.

6. Remand SB1759 back to the Water and Power Subcommittee and ask that they analyze the impacts of the bill on the environment, groundwater aquifers, refuges, fisheries and water quality and to consider amendments to safeguard taxpayer funds that have provided this water to private CVP contractors who profit from it.

7. Revoke the contracts that were renewed in 2005 by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation under the Bush administration that promised an additional 1.5 million acre feet of water a year to the major Central Valley Water Project (CVP) contractors. According to NASA’s data from the NASA/German Aerospace Center Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace), current levels of groundwater pumping are not sustainable so how can the state of California promise even more water when it is not available?

8. Retire drainage impaired, selenium-filled farmland on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley to stop the massive loss of water from California’s aquifers and preserve California fisheries and our precious, limited water supply. According to NASA, since October 2003, California’s groundwater has been depleted to by enough water to fill the Colorado River’s Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir.

9. Oppose the CA Water Bond as it is designed to promote the privatization of California’s water. A little-discussed provision in the bond empowers private companies to own, operate and profit from reservoirs and other water storage projects built by taxpayer money. While backers of the proposal assert that the provision provides the state with financing flexibility, the provision enables companies to make a profit by selling back to the public a finite natural resource or simply using it for their own profit-making interests like agriculture. In essence, general taxpayers will be forced to subsidize the profits of private corporations.

10. Oppose the channelization of Northern California’s water resources at it promotes the commandeering of water on behalf of Southern California. Water needs to flood and to breath to be healthy.

11. Set up a monitoring agency that includes a racial/gender balanced panel to scrutinize the CA Dept. of Water Resources’ Licensing Committee and hold them accountable to corporate interests and mitigate corruption.

12. Reduce groundwater consumption by advocating the legal use and expansion of new graywater recycling technologies, creative rain harvesting techniques and atmospheric water generation as cost-effective, sustainable approaches to increasing local water availability and decreasing dependence on shrinking water aquifers, expensive water treatment plants, and the devastating drain of our communal aquifers.

13. Provide funding for public education, rebates and other financial incentives/grants/low-cost loans for residential and commercial rainwater harvesting and graywater reuse installations to empower water self-sufficiency and sustainability on the local and tribal level.

14. Provide financial assistance to public schools and tribal charter schools to install rainwater harvesting systems to flush toilets and provide water for irrigation purposes, and actively educate school kids on water conservation.

15. Provide financial assistance to public schools and tribal charter schools to install commercial atmospheric water generators (AWG), to provide safe, clean drinking water for our state’s children who are most vulnerable to contaminants. Atmospheric water generation is a proven, cutting-edge technology that harvests drinking water from the humidity in the air while eliminating energy waste and pollution from producing and delivering bottled water,

16. Recommend that all state and county buildings no longer allow the use of bottled water or delivered water and recommend the use of atmospheric water generators to decrease the carbon-footprint while ensuring safe, clean drinking water for government employees.

17. Mandate the installation of integrated rainwater harvesting, graywater recycling, and atmospheric water generation technologies in all new government buildings to effectively lead the way in designing stacked solutions to alleviate shrinking water resources.

18. Advocate a new approach to “storm water” runoff that promotes the passive harvesting of rainwater by slowing and spreading it into concave rain gardens, rain parks and bioswales to encourage rainwater infiltration back to the aquifers. Currently we drain our communities by diverting rainwater to streets and storm drains contributing to downstream flooding, contamination and non-point source pollution rather than encouraging infiltration into our landscapes, waterways and aquifers.

19. Install flow meters on all agricultural and industrial water usage (as recommended by Director Snow at the 2009 Tribal Water Summit) to determine real-time water consumption and determine appropriate action when limits are not adhered to. Allocate money for enforcement of these limits.

20. Publicize tap-water contamination levels as determined by an analysis by the New York Times of more than 19 million drinking-water test results from the District of Columbia and the 45 states that made data available
(http://projects.nytimes.com/toxic-waters/contaminants/ca) and provide a vehicle for public commentary to be part of local government addressing these contaminant issues.

21. Provide a low-cost legal avenue for communities that are currently receiving highly contaminated water in their homes from private and public water companies that forces these companies to independently test and purify the water they sell to meet federal clean water guidelines.

22. Tighten drinking water standards for chemicals like industrial solvents (as well as a rocket fuel additive that has polluted drinking water sources in Southern California and elsewhere) and officially oppose industry lobbyists that block efforts to tighten these standards on behalf of their industrial clients.

23. Replace parking lots and other impervious surfaces that rely on asphalt and concrete with porous green technologies—including Permeable Pavers, Grass2Pave systems, Kudo blocks—in order to direct rainwater to maximize groundwater recharge and/or retention for storage of rainwater for possible re-use for irrigation or other non-potable uses.

24. Allocate funding to build flood control parks in urban areas and tribal lands that work as skateboard parks and play areas in the dry months and ponds that sustain wildlife and water recreation in the wet months and slow, spread and infiltrate rainwater to recharge aquifers.

25. Mandate the use of biodynamic separators or hydrosterns (specialized storm water filters) to clean polluted storm water before it enters creeks, rivers, streams, lakes and the ocean. Once filtered, the cleaned water can be discharged directly into soakaways, surface waters and the wider environment. This technology is commonly used in Europe and has an outstanding track record of mitigating non-source source pollution from entering natural waterways.

26.  Advocate the use of sustainable, recyclable erosion-control waddles to replace plastic-based hay waddles and silt fences that are ineffective, kill wildlife, and litter our hillsides rather than act as an effective sustainable erosion deterrent that protects our topsoil and water supply.

27. Collaborate more openly with the Tribal Water Planning Committee so that local and regional and state issues can be more effectively addressed by tribal people prior to governmental decision-making. Increase funding so that tribal participation is no longer completely dependent on the personal funds of the tribal participants.

28. To empower local water coalitions, environmental groups and tribes to monitor, manage and protect local watersheds. To hire representatives from these coalitions/groups as part of the 25 new water officers that Director Snow stated at the 2009 Tribal Water Summit he planned to hire. 

29. Stand up for water justice on all fronts regardless of the political liability that can occur when priority is given to the public interest over corporate agribusiness, industrial responsibility for water pollution, and private water contractor profiteering.