When NASA astronomers search the distant skies for possible life-holding planets, the first thing they also look for are signs of water. All life is dependent on water (as far as we know) and the development of our own civilization has historically occurred around dependable and abundant sources of water.
In recent years, however, access to cheap and apparently abundant fossil fuel energy has led our society away from a sustainable, balanced, and proper management of this most vital resource for humanity and all life. Instead of building communities near sources of water and organizing our livelihoods around the natural limitations of our watersheds, the hubris that comes with cheap energy has led to the foolish development of cities in the desert such as Las Vegas.
The idea of becoming self-sufficient and resilient in your water needs is not a new concept, but strangely, it’s a rare one even though water is our number one survival necessity. Luckily, there is much information and many working examples to draw from in becoming water independent. An ecological design system called Permaculture, for example, offers us the most advanced conceptual framework for water self-sufficiency that we have seen in our many years of research on the subject, along with practical tools to redesign our relationship with water. Below is a brief overview of how we can develop self-sufficiency with water via management principles and techniques.
Three Rules of Water Management
While water is essential to all life, it can also be tremendously damaging to the conditions that make life possible. Without proper design, water can lead to erosion, destruction, and the loss of overall land fertility. The most common landscape design (if you can call it that) within industrial society is to move water as far away as possible from the places we live.
In residential areas, water is directed away from our homes and yards and into sewer systems. In rural and agricultural areas, water rushes down barren landscapes and into the rivers (taking with it the precious little top soil we have left). The accumulation of water is seen as a threat that is most easily dealt with through encouraging it to move away from us as quickly as possible. The water we need for our own household use or for irrigation purposes is expected to be pumped in to our homes from distant, anonymous water sources.
The irrational logic of our modern-day society, then, encourages water to move away from the places we inhabit and then expects fossil fuel energy to pump that water back to the places where we live. There is hardly a more laconic definition of unsustainability or more damning example of our lunacy as a species.
Permaculture reverses that logic and encourages us to follow this simple maxim as it pertains to water management: “Slow it, spread it, and sink it.” Understanding the potentially damaging effects of water flowing OVER the landscape, permaculture incites us to first slow the movement of water over our lands, spread it over the largest amount of space possible, and sink it INTO the landscape nearest the places we inhabit.
Storing Water in the Ground
There is no better place to store water than in the land beneath our feet. The amount of water that can be held in an acre of fertile top soil is infinitely more water than we could possible store in any sort of tank or cistern. Permaculture offers several different practices and methodologies to store water in the soil.
These approaches to slowing the movement of water, spreading it around the landscape, and sinking it into the soil don´t only help to stop the destructive possibility of erosion that comes with water flows, but also increases the fertility of the land and its ability to withstand drought. It also keeps water near the places we inhabit which is essential for sustainable livelihoods.
Rainwater and Cisterns
While the majority of water that falls on our land or runs through our landscapes should be stored in the soil, it is also possible to integrate the structures and infrastructure on our lands into an overall water management plan. The rooves of our homes, barns, sheds and other structures are a great way to capture rainwater and store it in cisterns. Instead of depending on water being pumped into our homes from a source hundreds of miles away at a huge ecological and energetic cost, rainwater harvesting allows us to store the water we need from the rain that falls directly above us.
Graywater and Blackwater Management
Another aspect to sustainable and self-sufficient water management requires us to find ways to deal with the waste waters that come from our homes, namely gray water (from sinks, tubs, showers, and laundry) and black water (from toilets). Modern-day practices of dealing with these types of water are focused around the concept of “out of sight and out of mind” and encourage us to flush our waste water as far away as possible from where we live.
Permaculture, however, urges us to make use of the waters that we use through both gray water recycling ecological septic tanks. Our waste waters can contain large amounts of potentially dangerous pathogens. However, with proper management, they can also be a huge source of fertility for the lands we inhabit.
Moving Water
Water is heavy, and moving water from one place to the next is one of the highest energetic costs of our modern-day society. While storing water in the landscape, harvesting rainwater, and recycling our waste waters can help to reduce the need to move water, there are times when it can be necessary and even ecologically beneficial to move water from a lower part of the landscape to a higher elevation on the land.
Instead of depending on fossil fuel energy, there are a number of appropriate technologies that allow us take advantage of the natural energy of water and other sources to effectively move water around our land without dependence on external sources of contaminating energies.
Purifying Water
Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, us humans need a source of clean, potable water to drink. There are several different natural ways to clean our water, using everything from state of the art store bought technology, to homemade filtration devices.
These are all areas we will explore in ongoing posts of articles and resources on this site, so subscribe below and stay tuned for more inspiration, information, and items that can help you live up to the potential of these and other areas vital to self-sufficiency.
