Permaculture expert Brad Lancaster will share how rainwater harvesting and greywater irrigation can help Flagstaff make the best use of one of our region’s most valuable resources.

Since 1993, Brad Lancaster has run a successful permaculture consulting, design, and education business focused on integrated and sustainable approaches to landscape design, planning, and living. As he lives in the dryland environment, rainwater harvesting and greywater irrigation have long been both a specialty and a passion. Through his business, Lancaster has been able to share that passion and many of the fun innovations and daily adventures that come about from striving to live more sustainably and comfortably. 

At home, Lancaster and his brother harvest over 100,000 gallons of rainwater a year on a 1/8th acre urban lot and adjoining right-of-way. This harvested water is then turned into living air conditioners of food-bearing shade trees, abundant gardens, and a thriving landscape incorporating wildlife habitat, beauty, edible and medicinal plants, and more. Such sheltering landscapes cool buildings by 20°F, reduce water and energy bills, and require little more than rainwater to thrive. Outside the home, he has helped others do the same and enabled clients to create ephemeral springs, raise the level of water wells, and shade and beautify neighborhood streets by harvesting their street runoff in adjacent tree wells.

Lancaster started writing his first book, Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond as a way to further empower his clients and community to make such positive change in their own lives and back yards by harvesting rainwater. He wanted to provide an accessible resource that explains what water harvesting is, how to do it appropriately, and how to modify it to the unique conditions of everyone’s own site.

Lancaster believes we all can become beneficial stewards of the land, and partners in the ecosystem in which we live. He also believes that by sustainably harvesting rainwater we can begin to transform our households from consumers of resources to producers of resources. Drawing on his years of teaching, consulting, designing, on-the-ground implementation, and learning from others, Lancaster will offer his audience a clear and simple process to assess and design their own water harvesting landscapes.

This event is part of the Northern Arizona Book Festival and the One Community Sustainable Living Lecture Series, sponsored by the Masters of Arts in Sustainable Communities, Program in Community, Culture and Environment, Center for Sustainable Environments, and Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Program in partnership with the Coconino County Sustainable Building Program, the Coconino County Sustainable Economic Development Initiative, the City of Flagstaff Sustainability Program, Willow Bend Environmental Education  Center, and Coconino Community College.