Please Vote for ‘Free Water’ Video
Biological Cleaning, Conservation, Potable Water, Regional Water Cycle, Storm Water, Water Contaminaton & Loss, Water Harvesting — by Brad Lancaster November 15, 2012
Free Water is a semi-finalist in the $200,000 FOCUS FORWARD Filmmaker Competition and is in the running to become the $100,000 Grand Prize Winner. It could also be named an Audience Favorite if it’s among the ten that receives the most votes. If you love it, vote for it. Click on the VOTE button in the top right corner of the video player. Note that voting may not be available on all mobile platforms, and browser cookies must be enabled to vote.
Discover how to sustainably harvest 100,000 gallons of rainwater per year in your own back yard, by visiting Brad Landcaster in an urban desert as he reduces environmental and financial costs and produces free resources.
Please check out and vote for this great short video on the potential of planting the rain. If it wins, water harvesting will get a lot of great exposure, and we’ll have the opportunity to make a longer, more comprehensive video.
To cast your vote for this video, simply hover your mouse over the video, and you’ll find the ‘Vote’ button is the bottommost of the five icons on the right side.
Comments (1)Human-Empowered, Enlightened, and Energized Transport
Consumerism, peak oil — by Brad Lancaster August 16, 2011
Years ago at a red light I looked into the car beside me and saw the frowning driver’s hair blowing into the back seat as though she were leaning into a mighty storm. But her windows were up. The gale was coming from her air conditioner — on a beautiful day when an open window could just as easily cool and refresh. Then I coughed, and looked back at her tail pipe spewing out toxic exhaust. I was on a bicycle, and loving the day, except for the coughing. And that’s when the simple realization hit me.
Comments (6)Roman- and Byzantine-era Cisterns of the Past Reviving Life in the Present
Conservation, Irrigation, Potable Water, Storm Water, Waste Water, Water Contaminaton & Loss, Water Harvesting — by Brad Lancaster
Editor’s Note: Brad Lancaster has established himself as one of the world’s leading permaculture dryland authorities. Brad will be participating in the soon-to-begin International Permaculture Conference (IPC10) in Jordan, across September 2011, both with co-teaching the pre-IPC PDC and as one of the speakers at the Conference itself. If you wish to book your place on IPC10, you should move fast….
Photos and text by Brad Lancaster
In northern Jordan during the summer of 2009, I was on a mission to document a modern-day Roman-era cistern resurgence. I met with Engineer and Permaculture Project Manager Sameeh Al-Nuimat at the Care International office outside Amman. He was great. He has rural hardworking roots, loves native plants and traditional ways, is very enthusiastic and knowledgeable about whole-system design, and decided we’d begin the day by having an Arabic breakfast with everyone in the office. We all grouped around a very small, low table piled high with hummus, pita, olives, falafel etc, and ate with our hands. What a wonderful way to bring everyone together as the day begins!
Comments (7)Green Burials
Community Projects, Compost, Consumerism, Land, People Systems, Rehabilitation, Society, Soil Conservation, Waste Systems & Recycling — by Brad Lancaster March 24, 2010
by Brad Lancaster, who is, incidentally, co-teaching the upcoming PDC in Palestine – a course many may wish to attend so as to support this valuable regenerative work!
A conventional cemetery
When I was little I was terrified of death. I often cried myself to sleep as I thought of the end of life. It seemed so bleak, pointless, and severe.
Mom tried to comfort me with the concept of going to heaven. This did not reassure me at all. “How do you know there is a heaven?” I’d ask. “Have you been there?”
Comments (7)Harvesting Urban Drool
Conservation, Regional Water Cycle, Storm Water, Waste Water, Water Harvesting — by Brad Lancaster April 4, 2009
© Brad Lancaster, www.HarvestingRainwater.com
 Urban drool running down concreted channel Tujunga Wash, Los Angeles, California. Photo credit: Brad Lancaster |
All around the world I see water wastefully flowing down and out of urban street curbs and concreted storm drains even though it has not rained in months. It is not stormwater I see flowing. It is urban drool. Others call it “nuisance runoff” – water from leaky pipes, driveway car washes, overwatered landscapes, and so on – our waste. But it can be a resource. It can be harvested.
That is what is happening in Los Angeles, California long a mile long stretch of the Tujunga Wash Flood Control Channel, between Vanowen Street and Oxnard Avenue. It is bringing myriad life back to this community.
Comments (0)Street Orchards for Community Security
Biological Cleaning, Community Projects, Conservation, Food Forests, Food Plants - Perennial, Land, Potable Water, Regional Water Cycle, Rehabilitation, Roads, Soil Conservation, Storm Water, Trees, Urban Projects, Village Development, Waste Systems & Recycling, Waste Water, Water Contaminaton & Loss, Water Harvesting — by Brad Lancaster January 19, 2009
© Brad Lancaster, www.HarvestingRainwater.com
 Fig. 24.The heat island effect. An excessively wide, exposed, solar-oven-like residential street in Tucson, Arizona absorbs the sun’s heat during the day like a battery, then radiates it out at night. This local warming effect has raised summer temperatures in Tucson by 6°F (3°C) since the 1940s, which contributes to global warming since the higher temperatures result in people using air conditioners more, which are powered by electricity generated through the burning of coal. Note that no shade trees are planted in the public right-of-way along the street, leaving street and sidewalk baked. All runoff is drained off site leaving the development dehydrated. Reproduced with permission from “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1" |
My view of public streets was radically changed when I heard ecovillage designer Max Lindigger tell a story of an insightful walk he took with his grandfather. “Look there,” said his grandfather, pointing to condominiums being built on the once forested slopes above his village in the Swiss Alps. “That’s where we grew and gathered food during the war. The forests were common land, a reserve of community resources. What commons remain? Where will we grow and gather our food in the next catastrophe?”
I then looked at my Sonoran desert city of Tucson, Arizona and asked myself, “Where are my community’s forests, our commons? Where would we get our food in times of need?”
Comments (5)
