What is it about?
Scientists Santosh Ghimire (ORISE) and John Johnston (EPA) recently led a research effort that assessed the environmental and human health impacts of green infrastructure systems such as rainwater harvesting. In this research paper impacts and efficiencies at the watershed scale were investigated. They reported on an evaluation of the impacts of domestic and agricultural rainwater harvesting systems in three watersheds of the Albemarle-Pamlico River Basin of the southeastern U.S. Their analyses show rainwater harvesting within the watershed at an adoption rate of 25% would reduce surface and groundwater usage, cumulative energy usage, and global warming potential. The potential lifetime energy cost savings are estimated to be between $5M and $24M.
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Why is it important?
Scaling human health and ecological impacts to larger scales to investigate the outcome of wider adoption rates has received less attention. They showed that household and agricultural rainwater harvesting show promise not only as climate adaptation practices but are also economically viable.
Perspectives
This research successfully builds on earlier papers that provided the rainwater harvesting system designs and addressed the ecological impact of reduced instream flow from rainwater capture and diversion of surface water. These papers can be found at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es500189f and http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecohyd.2013.03.007
Dr. John M Johnston
Environmental Protection Agency
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Holistic impact assessment and cost savings of rainwater harvesting at
the watershed scale, Elementa Science of the Anthropocene, March 2017, University of California Press,
DOI: 10.1525/elementa.135.
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