RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Coming out of the monsoon season in Arizona, we make a return visit to one person who's been loving the dark clouds, the Rainman. That's how people in the mostly parched city of Tucson think of Brad Lancaster, a tireless proselytizer for harvesting water. NPR's Ted Robbins joined him under the pouring skies.
(Soundbite of rainstorm)
TED ROBBINS: The tall, thin evangelist with a red beard doesn't have to pray for rain.
Mr. BRAD LANCASTER (Rainwater Harvester): Yeah, a wonderful summer monsoon downpour that's flooded the streets and is filling the tanks.
ROBBINS: Brad Lancaster preaches salvation from the heavens in the form of water. It's coming down in buckets, in two buckets all over his yard and into a 1,200 gallon cistern on the side of his house in Tucson, a place which receives on average, just 12 inches of rain a year, half of which come in torrents during the three summer months.
Mr. LANCASTER: And we're directing the overflow water from that and any runoff from the pathways and patios into adjoining planting basins.
ROBBINS: So rather than getting - trying to get rid of the water, you're trying to keep it.
Mr. LANCASTER: Absolutely, yeah. This is the harvest season.
ROBBINS: Brad Lancaster has two books and a Web site devoted to rainwater harvesting. Now rainwater harvesting is as old as civilization, but it's been largely forgotten as we developed pumped-piped water systems. Brad Lancaster's crusade is to bring back the ancient methods.
Mr. LANCASTER: By taking up the chant of slow it, spread it, and sink it.
ROBBINS: And he wasn't about to stick to his own property. He planted trees next to the street in dirt basins which use gravity to catch water running towards storm drains.
Mr. LANCASTER: The bottom of the basins are lower than the streets. So now when the water flows along the curb, it enters the dip, fills up the basins.
ROBBINS: Which overflow into other basins down the street.
Mr. LANCASTER: When we first did it, it wasn't legal.
ROBBINS: Now, thanks to Lancaster's lobbying, all it takes is a permit. So he got his neighbors to do it. They made cuts in the pavement and planted native trees every 20 feet or so. He says it brought the neighbors together, and more.
Mr. LANCASTER: It also beautifies the neighborhood, cools the temperatures in summer, and produces food because we eat the mesquite pods off the mesquite trees, the palo verde seeds and flowers, and the peanut-flavored desert ironwood seeds.
ROBBINS: Brad Lancaster wants everyone to slow, spread, and sink the water. And he says anyone can do it.
Mr. LANCASTER: I think it's a snap. All you need to do is to get a shovel and start moving some dirt.
ROBBINS: Lancaster helped persuade the Arizona legislature to pass a state tax credit for homeowners who install water conservation systems. He says he'll keep his crusade going in the Southwest, the Southeast, the plains, anywhere where rainwater is rapidly going down the drain instead of slowly sinking into the ground. Ted Robbins, NPR News, Tucson. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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