Imagine living in the desert and not having to use any water from a local utility company. That's what a local couple has been doing since 2005 and they say it's not as difficult as most people might imagine.

The Tucson area gets an average of about 12 inches of rainfall every year, with about half of it coming down during the summer monsoon. It doesn't sound like a lot of precipitation, but a growing number of people are harvesting this amount and Charles Cole and his wife Carol Townsend say the rainfall is providing all of their water requirements. That even includes a small pool on their property outside of city limits where they have no water service from a local utility.

Cole and Townsend had their retirement home built northwest of Tucson, near the Tucson Mountains, and they made sure to add a state-of-the-art water harvesting system that they use for their plants and pool outside. The free water from the clouds is also utilized for their washing, cooking and drinking inside.

The couple has a roof that exceeds 5,000 square feet, with gutters that feed to a cistern that holds about 26,000 gallons. Cole says an inch of rainfall provides 216 gallons of great water they can use. When we visited in July, the cistern was holding more than 8 feet of water!

Cole and Townsend are encouraging as many people as possible to capture as much rainfall as feasible. They know that everyone won't be able to install a sophisticated system like theirs, but if more local residents begin to capture or channel their rainfall, Tucson could save millions of gallons of groundwater every year.

City of Tucson Rainwater Harvesting
Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, by Brad Lancaster

Watch Part 1 of Water Harvesting

Story by Tony Paniagua