Everything but the kitchen sink … and the toilet.
That’s what gray water is — reusing the shower, bathroom sink and washing machine water to irrigate a landscape.
Peter Gallo, along with other community members, will hold a gray water harvesting workshop on April 24 for people interested in water conservation for their homes.
“This is water that can be reused for landscape irrigation, but not only that,” Gallo said. “You could also fill your toilet, We call it bucket flushing. It’s a good way to get your hands on some gray water and just use it every day without having to worry about installing a big system. You could just collect the water and then reuse it for flushing your toilet.”
Gray water systems come in many different shapes and sizes, with systems that range from a couple strategically placed buckets and rain barrels to a full-scale plumbing and landscape remodeling.
Alberto Lopez has done handyman work all his life and helps install gray water systems around Albuquerque. He said one hard part about installing a system is finding a plumber who understands landscaping.
“You need to be a little bit of all of it, not only for the install but also for the design,” he said. “The local code requires that a licensed plumber be involved.”
Lopez helped install a system in Denis Doyon’s house. It waters Doyon’s yard, flower and fruit trees with gray water.
“The plumber went as far as stubbing it out, and I and Denis took it from there,” Lopez said. “Because they were doing a remodel for the house, we wanted to get all the plumbing in place. With gray water, you have to customize it to your house and plot, so that’s why it’s a bit more involved than standard plumbing and irrigation. We had all this gravity fed.”
Katherine Yuhas is the water conservation officer at the Albuquerque Water Authority. The conservation program started in 1995, when the water authority was producing about 40 billion gallons annually. Now it produces 32 billion annually.
“The state regulates gray water. And, in 2003, the state made it legal to use up to 250 gallons of gray water per day,” Yuhas said. “It’s not very popular at all, frankly. We don’t promote the gray water program. We don’t offer rebates for it. The reason is that we treat water at our water reclamation plant to a much higher standard than you could in your yard.”
Lopez said there are many other reasons to use gray water aside from water conservation.
“If you’re using potable water — because we’re talking about gray water as an alternative to potable water — you’re saving tax payer money,” he said. “You’re reducing the load on the treatment systems that are massively expensive to build and maintain.”
UNM Sustainability lecturer Maggie Seeley is holding the next demonstration at her house, where she and Gallo built the gray water system she uses.
“Gray water has lot of interesting things floating in it, microbes, bacteria (and) compost, which could be food matter or laundry matter,” Seeley said. “So, you can imagine that as it percolates through soil, all those are left behind, so all of those are very fine topsoil providers. And if we need anything in New Mexico, it’s richer topsoil, so we can plant vegetables and live. It saves money (and) recycles water.”
Yuhas said there aren’t a lot of plumbers who know how to install gray water, which makes adding a system more difficult.
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“I don’t see us promoting gray water reuse as an irrigation tool,” she said. “The best thing you could do to reuse water would be to take your shower water and use it to flush your toilet, and then that toilet water would end up at that reclamation point. If you just put it on your landscaping, that’s two uses and you would have gotten two uses sending it back to the treatment plant.”
Seeley said from the eight or nine inches of rainfall that Albuquerque gets each year, residents should be recycling the water they do get with rain barrels and other catchment systems.
“We have very little rainfall, but it’s enough that if we recycle catch rain water, we can have a viable economy in which we support ourselves,” Seeley said. “And the ability to actually have a sustainable New Mexico base population with the water that we have — gray water sort of takes us off the water grid, so to speak.”
Lopez said gray water has been gaining popularity, but one of the main drawbacks for people contemplating a system is the idea of dirty water.
“It’s hard not to think that this is dirty, and it’s bad, and you should get rid of it and flush it away,” Lopez said. “And we need to change our thinking. There is actually a concept of clean gray water, meaning that you don’t have heavy metals and toxins and things like that. You don’t want to be flushing away paint residue from paint brushes or bleach. That would dirty up your gray water. You have to change what’s considered clean and dirty in your mind.”
*Gray Water Workshop
April 24
If you want to attend the workshop, e-mail Peter Gallo at Peter.J.Gallo@gmail.com*
