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Roman- and Byzantine-era Cisterns of the Past Reviving Life in the Present

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!

The Village of Rainwater Tea

We then made for the water. In the village of Bayudah Al Shrquia there is a long tradition of rainwater harvesting. Roman- and Byzantine-era cisterns abound in both ruin and reuse, with the limestone hills peppered with underground tanks dug into the rock. Many of these tanks have been in continual use since their creation over a thousand years ago, while others have been newly refurbished, funded in part by revolving community loan funds often facilitated by Care International. The cisterns are olla-shaped, and often built below a limestone catchment. A depressed sediment trap just in front of the cistern’s water entrance is usually the only filtration. A boulder with a trap door is put atop the cistern opening so no one falls in.

Villagers covet their rainwater for drinking and cooking, while municipal and trucked-in water is used only for washing and periodic supplemental irrigation. The water truck usually does not come more than once a week — or even just once every three weeks. I saw many systems on this trip and drank lots of sweet rainwater. Many underground tanks simply have a can or bucket on a rope to pull the water up the cistern so it can be carried into the house. Sameeh filled two glasses with cistern water direct from one such can (no complex filtration) and we drank it down — absolutely delicious and revitalizing! For some of the simple, passive filtration used in these domestic systems, see the cistern principles in Chapter 3 of “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1.”

I was also treated to rainwater tea with mint as I interviewed a family about their water-harvesting system. They all loved their system, and had far more trust in their home’s rainwater-harvesting system, which they themselves could manage, than in the intermittent, lower-quality, and less dependable municipal and trucked-in water systems over which they had no control. As they said, “Water you catch you have.”

Sameeh then took me to a new 10,500-gallon (40 m3) cistern being built in the Roman style. The crew of four Egyptian men digging the cistern would lower themselves into the excavation via a rope on a pulley that was supported by a tripod above the hole. I immediately asked if I could go down inside — and did so, to everyone’s entertainment. This was so good! These cisterns are still being built the old way — except for the jackhammer, which now speeds the process along. After excavation, the tank is plastered watertight. This crew builds 35 cisterns a year. In clay soil the excavation takes eight days; in rock it takes longer. I was thrilled to experience this, and realize that this strategy, this technology, never died here, but has continued and is now expanding again.

Dig a hole, find a cistern

Next I traveled to other areas of northern Jordan, near Amman (average annual rainfall 10.7 inches or 272 mm — Note: such cistern rehabilitation is often not funded in areas that receive less than 7.8 inches or 200 mm annual rainfall) to see similar work by NGOs Mercy Corps and JOHUD. Here new homes are being built at a rapid rate, but there is not the municipal water infrastructure to support them. Instead, rainwater does, thanks to the work of the past.

Ancient cisterns are regularly found when foundations or tree holes are dug for new homes. They are then cleaned out, replastered if necessary, and capped with a concrete ring and steel door. Downspouts from the roof direct rainwater into the tank, and a pump is placed within the tank to direct the water into the home’s plumbing system.

Again, revolving community loan funds (often initiated by Care International, Mercy Corps, or JOHUD) typically fund the restoration of these cisterns. The community decides how to distribute the loans, to whom, for how much, and for what projects. Water harvesting, organic agriculture, women’s empowerment, and composting are typical funded projects — but community empowerment is the ultimate goal, as to receive the grants for loans, the communities must organize, learn to articulate their issues, do accounting, and give everyone equal representation in the decision-making processes.

Mercy Corps alone reports over 1,200 recipients of water-harvesting-project funding in just 2.5 years, with a cumulative total of almost 16 million gallons (60,000 cubic meters) of water harvested. Everyone who receives a system also gets 10 days of training and, after the water tests clean, a key to the cistern. This also helps economically challenged municipalities which currently deliver water at a cost lower than that of treating and transporting it. And it helps the environment because current municipal water and groundwater consumption exceed safe yield, meaning water is being pumped and consumed at a rate exceeding natural recharge. Thus wells and waterways are going dry. The cistern systems do not add to the extraction of dwindling imported/pumped in water.

Harvested rainwater goes further in the communities also implementing greywater-harvesting systems to reuse the rainwater after it has been used for its primary purposes. The rainwater goes further still when those local on-site waters are used to irrigate food that is grown on-site and fertilized with compost (household wastes transformed into another household resource — one that increases the moisture-retaining ability of the soil).

Upping the scale

While these projects were typically at the household scale there is precedent for the community scale. The last stop was the 19th-century Greek Orthodox St. George’s Church in Madaba, built atop a 4th century cistern that is so large, and has so many underground channels entering it, that the church now has no clue how large its original watershed was. The watershed seems to include much of the old city — collecting water off the worn cobblestone streets (and the overflow rainwater from the ancient household cistern systems above).

The labyrinth of underground pipes and channels reminded me of the myriad water pipes below all our modern cities and communities. But here in this ancient infrastructure, water was not drained out of the community. Now, however, a whole separate system of pipes imports water at great cost from elsewhere to replace the stormwater that is drained away. Here in northern Jordan the old systems valued and utilized every drop of free, high-quality, local rainwater. For local water was the only water.

And these ancient strategies are needed now more than ever. They were forgotten for a while, but we are remembering them again.

Brad Lancaster

Since 1993 I’ve run a successful permaculture consulting, design, and education business focused on integrated and sustainable approaches to landscape design, planning, and living. And as I live in a dryland environment, water harvesting has long been one of my specialties and a passion. I started writing the Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond series with the goal of empowering my clients and my community to make positive change in their own lives and yards, by harvesting and enhancing free on-site resources such as water, sun, wind, shade, and more. I wanted to provide accessible books that explain what water harvesting is, how to do it appropriately, and how to tailor water-harvesting strategies to the unique conditions of different sites and integrate it with the harvest of other resources. I believe we all can become beneficial stewards of the land, and partners in the ecosystem in which we live, and I believe that by harvesting water—and more—we can all begin to transform our households and neighborhoods from being consumers of resources to generators—and even regenerators—of resources. Drawing on my years of teaching, consulting, designing, on-the-ground implementation, and learning from others, I offer readers my clear and simple process to assess and design their own harvesting systems at home and throughout their community.

7 Comments

  1. G’day Brad, great to see you putting this up here. For anyone heading to the convergence, Brad is a great teacher with a wealth of knowledge and practical experience.
    I had the privilege of working with Brad in palestine at the Marda PDC last year. If your in drylands this is your man. Brad, could you put something up about [quanta’s] and some of your street scaping [desert harvest] biz?

    Sean – I would say it would be a lime based plaster traditionally, or a 3 sand/ 1 cement mix plaster.

    Good on ya Brad, you’re a legend mate.

  2. Plastering(lining ) the rain water unresisting system ( storage tank )
    Plastering material
    Sand
    Cement
    Crushed limestone
    Mixed of sand crushed limestone and cement is used to plastering water well
    The ratio is 1sand: 2 crushed limestone : 1cement
    Usually three plastering face (stage) is used to strengthen the wall of rainwater harvesting storage tank
    1- the first face or layer is to smoothing the walls and to provide strong base for the second face.
    2- the second face or rough face is to provide thickness and provides base for the third face (fine face)
    3- the third face or fine face to provide very fine and smooth wall to prevent water seepage through the walls ( the cement proportion is higher than other faces )
    During plastering the wall will be let for drying 3-5 days before starting of the second layer in winter the constructor use to make fire inside the well to fastening dryness of the wall
    4- at the base of the system a cleaning (face) layer of about 7- 10 cm thickness is made before construction the base of the well
    5- Amish metal network of 15 x15 cm of 10 mm metal wear is made on the base of the rain water harvesting reservoir on the top of cleaning face to strengthen the well bases the metal wear should be stand with the wall from all side to about 30-50 cm height for more fixation the wall and the bases
    6- A second layer of about 15-20 cm thickness of cement and sand is made to prevent water seepage from the bottom of the well
    7- The wall layer or face and the floor face or layer should be done alternatively to avoid the crack and water seepage; first doing the cleaning face of the floor flowed by the first face of the wall then the second face of the floor and the second face of the wall and at the end the third face of floor or (roobah) and the smooth face of the wall.

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