Green Side of the Street

(originally published in the South Roanoke Circle)

It’s been an exceptionally wet spring around these parts, no question. Puts me in mind of when I first moved here, after too many years in Arizona, and I purely loved waking to the sound of steady rain, music to my desert-parched ears.

However, as we all know, past precipitation is no indication of future rainstorms. My feeling from living through the last decade or so of distressing reservoir-level reports is the smart money’s on a dry summer. And a statistic I’ve seen tossed around says that up to 40% of a household’s water use during a dry summer is for outdoor watering.

A rain barrel is a simple means for storing some of the water that falls on your rooftop that would otherwise end up in the sewer system, and using it for something functional – generally outdoor watering. And with minimal effort, it’s something you can easily put in place at your home.

Complete systems are available from about $100, with higher pricetags for those designed to look like something other than, well, a big plastic barrel. The most affordable complete system I found, at around $80, can be purchased through Northern Tool, which has a store in Salem; call them at 986-0264 and they can have one shipped from the warehouse in about a week. Kits are also available through a number of vendors.

However, if you own, or can borrow, a drill and a jigsaw (or even a manual drywall saw), making your own is a fairly simple undertaking, once you locate a suitable vessel.

Hans Heerens of Cassell Lane was at the home improvement store picking up a few things to build raised garden beds earlier this year when his eye fell on a 44-gallon barrel. The idea of a rain barrel had been lurking in his mind since seeing one at a neighbors’ house, and he decided on the spot that the barrel was the start of a great DIY project. “Honestly, it took next to no time at all” to make it downspout-ready and outfit it with a spigot and overflow valve.

Hans took on the project free-form, but for those who like a plan in hand, online guides abound; a brief supplication at the great god google led me to two that appeared particularly helpful. Both include a complete parts list, which may help you sidestep the near-inevitable return trips to the hardware store that beset the simplest DIY project:

https://www.longwood.edu/CLEANVA/rainbarrels.htm

and this one, from YouTube:

Keeping in mind that water will not flow uphill is key to rain-barrel placement. Like many yards in the area, the Heerens’ is on a grade. Hans worked this to his advantage, placing the barrel upslope from the new garden beds. Realizing that he wouldn’t have sufficient pressure to, say, run a sprinkler, Hans created a garden irrigation system by drilling holes along a length of old hose he had, which he then snaked through the beds. A turn of the spigot on the barrel, and voila – high-level, low-tech irrigation. “Not that we’ve had a single dry week since I installed it,” he points out wryly.

Another advantage of capturing some of the rain coming off your roof is that it will help slow down run-off into streams and storm drains, thereby reducing erosion, sedimentation, and pollution. Environmentalists worry most about the initial surge of storm water after a downpour because it causes the most erosion of the previously dry soil, and carries the most sediment and pollutants into the waterways.

Will 50 or so gallons of water stored in a rain barrel solve much in the way of environmental problems? Well, heck no. But it’s one small step, and one that feels good. And like all small steps, if a lot of folks start stepping, we can really get somewhere.

Amy still loves the rain, and has further information about the search for suitable barrels for the DIYer. Husband Sean has a manual drywall saw to loan, though personally he recommends borrowing a jigsaw instead. Contact greenside@southroanokecircle.com.

The topic of green beer was just too tempting to pass up this month, even realizing as I did that it wouldn’t actually mean multiple evenings of product sampling on an expense account. What sorts of things, I found myself wondering – besides food coloring, that is – would make one beer choice more green than another?

As it turns out, in this as in many other environmental questions, absolutes are hard to come by. There are a dizzying number of factors that any analysis worth its margarita salt would need to figure in. In broad overview, start with the raw crop – what it is and how it’s grown (barley over corn; organic over conventional), not to mention the crop’s proximity to its point of brewing. Move from there on to the efficiency of the brewery – how it’s powered, and other points. Then look at packaging – cans, bottles (clear or colored), or kegs – and then move on to those pesky transport questions: how, and how far (train over long-haul truck over ocean crossing), and let’s not forget the matter of refrigeration either.

Leapin’ leprechauns, it’s enough to drive one to drink. Some home-brewed dandelion wine, perhaps.

Unwilling to look for a grant to conduct my very own complete life cycle analysis of a full complement of domestically brewed beers, I turned instead to the Internet to bring you the following easily sippable advice:

1. Eschew packaging: drink draft. Barring that, choose recyclable packaging. In Roanoke, that’s cans or (sigh) clear glass, at least for the near future.
2. Drink local, or regional, or at least from the east coast.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t note that there are a handful of brewers out there making real efforts to lighten their environmental load on the planet with things such as solar- and wind-powered plants and impressive waste-recycling records. Truly, they deserve the support of your raised glass as well. Among them are Sierra Nevada (of the famous Pale Ale) in California, and New Belgium (maker of the Fat Tire beers) in Colorado, and Brooklyn Brewery in, well, Brooklyn.

Yes, California and Colorado are well across the Mississippi, in contradiction to #2, above – but as I mentioned early on, absolutes are hard to come by in this business.

All that said, one of the largest impacts of what you drink has to do with something much closer to home: how far away is your point of sale, and how do you get yourself there?

So this St. Paddy’s, walk, bike, or take public transport to your favorite drinking establishment. And ask if they have Roanoke-based Railhouse Beer on tap.

Amy has lived in South Roanoke since 2002. She and her husband, Sean Patrick McGinnis, have two bonnie wee lassies.