It's free, it's drinkable. Why don't more Arizonans harvest rainwater during a drought?

About 90 percent of Thad Johnson’s neighbors in rural Coconino County haul drinking water, unable to pay the expense of reaching the water table a mile underground.

Johnson and his family live fully on rainwater, something that is still a rarity in Arizona.

“Which seems a little bit nuts to me because the rain is free and it's delicious,” said Johnson, who designs off-grid homes and lives in one. For eight years he has supplied all the house water demands with a 15,000-gallon cistern and a home filtration system for potable water. Only one other home in the area has converted to rainwater.

This winter many of his neighbors ran out of water when the dirt roads turned so muddy from the snow that the water trucks couldn’t come through. But it was a banner year for filling rainwater tanks.

Across Arizona, communities face water shortage threats due to drought, overpumping and lack of groundwater regulation. Looming water cuts in cities from Colorado River water have sent officials and managers scrambling for the next bucket.

The interest and drive to install rainwater harvesting systems comes from residents wanting to be water independent or to live sustainably, but some cities are also placing bets on rainfall. Because the upfront costs for residential systems are so high, they offer partial rebates to customers. Advocates hope this financial support and practice can spread across the state.

“Everyone should be doing this,” said Lisa Shipek, executive director for Water Management Group. The organization has been a cornerstone for expanding the practice in Tucson and in inspiring green infrastructure policy.

Shipek said looking realistically at the water resources on the ground, instead of relying on importing it from hundreds of miles away, would prepare Arizona cities for the future and make them more tolerant to drought.

Rebates offered in some cities, not others

It doesn’t rain a lot in Arizona but, in most counties, it rains enough.

For decades, Tucson has met its water demands with a mix of Colorado River water, groundwater and treated wastewater. The city now considers stormwater its fourth source. Tucson Water has provided rebates to customers to install rainwater harvesting systems for over a decade, and three years ago started charging customers a new fee to increase investments in green infrastructure projects throughout the city.

The vision is that rainwater will become a growing and legitimate source of the city’s water resource portfolio, said James MacAdam, administrator of the conservation and stormwater resources division.

“Every community can benefit by looking at rainwater as a resource and putting it to use,” MacAdam said.

But not every community is doing so. Flagstaff and Prescott offer modest rebates for rainwater barrels, Cochise County offers grants to businesses but not residential units, and in Maricopa County, where over 60% of the state’s population lives, there are no incentives at all.

Even in Tucson, where rebates can be generous, thousands of residents can’t benefit because they are not Tucson Water customers or they live in unincorporated areas.

Last year, legislators introduced an initiative to replicate Tucson’s rainwater harvesting rebate program statewide.

The bill was never heard but became a lead pitch on the negotiations for a water conservation fund overseen by the state Water Infrastructure Finance Authority, or WIFA, said primary sponsor former state Rep. Sarah Liguori, who served as a lawmaker in the Phoenix area.

Funding criteria for the WIFA grants are open to a wide range of conservation measures, and there is no guarantee that rainwater harvesting proposals will be in the mix, but Liguori is optimistic. She has continued conversations on rainwater harvesting incentives with cities in metro Phoenix. Some have expressed interest in starting a program.

Related: What to know about the Colorado River drought plan for Arizona, California and Nevada

A water conservation culture

A lack of government support for rainwater harvesting does not translate into a lack of action in communities.

In Tucson, citizen action was an undeniable precedent to the city’s enthusiasm to build rain gardens, cut street curbs and expand stormwater use. Nonprofits and residents, like nationally-renowned rainwater guru Brad Lancaster, have encouraged awareness and conservation for decades. Many take pride in having a desert-dweller philosophy.

“They understand they're in the Sonoran Desert, and understand that means living in a different way,” said Shipek. The growth of rainwater harvesting in Tucson has felt like a “natural progression."

“Water conservation," she said, "is a piece of our culture.”

MacAdam, of Tucson Water, said utility records show water harvesters become water savers. In 24 years, residential water use has dropped over 30%. Tucson residents have one of the lowest per capita water use rates in the state, even lower than the national average.

In 2007, the utility created a special fee, now about 80 cents on customers’ monthly bills, to grow conservation programs and provide rebates to customers when they retrofitted their homes with water-saving appliances like efficient toilets and washing machines. In 2012 they added the rainwater harvesting rebate. Overall, the conservation program translates into over 2.6 billion gallons saved.

Numerous cities throughout Arizona have established similar rebates for water-efficient appliances, but few have invested in rainwater harvesting.

At first glance, it doesn’t seem like a cost-effective solution. The investment in tanks and cisterns is expensive, over $1 per gallon, and doesn’t produce immediately measurable water savings. Instead, it is a new, reliable and free source of water that reduces city water demands.

Most residents use the rainwater they harvest outdoors, and outdoor water use can account for 40 to 70% of their total use. Not pulling that out of the aquifer or a nearby river is extra valuable.

“Once you put water outdoors in the landscape, it's lost to the system,” MacAdams said. “When you flush water down the toilet, we actually use that for reclaimed water or store it in the aquifer for later.”

The rebate program provides partial payments for both passive and active rainwater systems, with a maximum of $500 and $2,000 respectively. Passive harvesting guides the flow of runoff so water can better soak into the landscape. Street curb cuts, basins, trenches, and similar features can then increase moisture, shade and vegetation. Active harvesting works by installing roof gutters, filters and tanks to store and use rainwater in the future.

Since 2012, about 3,550 applicants have received money from the program. About 80% installed an active rainwater harvesting system and 20% created rain gardens. Of those who applied for harvesting systems, nearly 30% claimed the maximum rebate amount.

On average, people using the rebate system are saving 750 gallons a month, MacAdam said.

The $4.5 million investment has a return of nearly 15 million gallons saved, according to utility reports.

Limitations and opportunities for homeowners

Susana Eden, former assistant director for the University of Arizona’s Water Resources Research Center, believes the trend of rainwater harvesting in the state is rising but doubts it is likely to explode.

Its reach is limited because most houses use the harvested water only for landscaping, not for indoor use, and the investment to store enough water for a household’s annual use is too high for most Arizonans.

Precipitation is also highly variable in the state. Rainwater harvesting in the southwest corner, in Yuma and La Paz counties, is not recommended because rainfall there is barely 4 inches a year. An area with good rainfall potential could also be affected by drought.

Despite high prices and climate uncertainties, in rural communities that rely mostly on groundwater, rain can be a renewable and realistic source of water.

“As water gets scarcer, the cost-benefit gets better,” Eden said.

Eden and colleagues created two hypothetical scenarios and compared the costs of drilling a 350-foot well and installing a 28,000-gallon rainwater harvesting system in Cochise County. They were almost the same.

But while tanks can fill up during the monsoon seasons, wells can and have gone dry because of unregulated pumping by players with longer straws in the aquifer.

Read more: Arizona water providers agree to voluntary CAP water cuts to preserve levels at Lake Mead

Catchment basins are an easy way to start

For new homeowners, going fully independent with rainwater isn’t as complex. Johnson, designing energy-efficient and off-grid homes with Solar Terra Design LLC, said construction loans allow families to take on these ambitious projects. It’s something anyone would be able to do by adding $25 to their monthly mortgage payment.

Incentives are helpful for installing big tanks but they aren’t necessary to save water for outdoor uses.

In Tucson, Jana Segal’s front yard is verdant with huckleberry, wolfberries, moringa and native plants and trees.

She has nearly 1,700 gallons worth of rainwater storage spread in different tanks around the corners of the house, even capturing a neighbor’s roof runoff, to have a source of water for her landscape in the dry summer months.

But she barely waters most of her yard because the landscape is already retaining so much water, she said. For about five years she has worked to build small basins to catch the rain. She also directs the water from the roof with a downspout to her trees.

There’s not much needed other than to wait for the rains to come, see how water is flowing and start digging, Segal said.

Cisterns are fine, she said, but she prefers to talk people into catchment basins. There is no money involved in it, unless you cut your street curb, and water can keep sinking into the ground long after tanks have filled with rain. It also grows beautiful gardens and food for critters and people. Segal started a social media campaign asking Tucsonans to share photos of their own rainwater catchment basins, hoping it would encourage the practice. It is something anyone can do if they have a shovel, she said.

Cities have long used some of these principles to manage and avoid floods. Many consider green infrastructure, also known as low-impact design, in city plans.

The practices modify city infrastructure to mimic the natural flow of water, slowing it down and helping it percolate. Instead of going into sewers, stormwater becomes a resource. Many cities, like the greater Phoenix area and Tucson, are using green infrastructure to support and expand urban vegetation, which can also reduce the heat-island effect.

Tucson added a special fee to customers' water bills in 2020 to expand these projects that will grow and expand vegetation and shade across the city.

Tucson Water is also studying the development of large stormwater recharge projects, similar to those the Cochise Conservation and Recharge Network is piloting.

"We are actively working with other folks to understand how much rainwater and stormwater is actually sort of physically available to us," MacAdam said.

Going 'hydro-local'

Every year, the yard on Benjie Messer’s former Phoenix house would flood so badly that water would seep through the walls. “We would have to rip out the carpet and put down towels whenever it rained to sop up the pooling water,” he said. The drainage problem was bad, and he tried adding stucco, then put a 6-inch stem wall. It wasn’t doing much.

Someone in his congregation said he should try talking to the Watershed Management Group. They created basins, planted native vegetation and installed roof gutters and tanks. His home stopped flooding.

Messer, a music director and songwriter, went headfirst into rainwater harvesting. He started going to every single cooperative event organized by the nonprofit, volunteering to create a “backyard oasis” in a Phoenix school, a church, and other people’s homes. Messer didn’t think of it as a new profession but the work was so gratifying that he got certified in water harvesting design.

The writing of Brad Lancaster was a deep source of inspiration to him, he said. The idea that we can have “a nice life on earth” with the resources at hand was something that felt very real to him.

“There is some hopefulness on reclaiming the land in a way that is human-scaled,” he said.

Shipek believes local planning and action is what should be regarded as a solution.

In her view, water emergency plans should come from observing and responding to the reality on the ground. Local conditions should dictate action, she said, but current emergency plans rely solely on the levels at Lake Mead, the huge reservoir that stores water from the Colorado River.

“Back to 2020, we had one of the driest years on record here in Tucson. Four inches of rain. Not a single drought plan or response kicked in that year at the city or county level," Shipek said. "That to me is a little mind-blowing."

Drought emergency plans focusing on the Colorado River dams have to do with how reliant some Arizona cities have become on them. Shipek said it ties into the main obstacle to achieving a sustainable water future: the mentality that we can always get water from somewhere else.

Clara Migoya covers environment issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Send tips or questions to clara.migoya@arizonarepublic.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: How rainwater harvesting could help solve Arizona's water woes