Wastewater Harvesting

Sunset Magazine’s March issue features one of SludgeHammer’s most exciting new frontiers.  Richard Jennings of Santa Fe, NM, and his company, Water Management Associates, created this spectacular garden in the water-starved southwest. He accomplished this for the Kinney family with the SludgeHammer wastewater system. It became the backbone for a complete rainwater and wastewater harvesting plan.  Not only do the Kinneys purify their water and protect the environment, they get the added benefit of gorgeous planting at no demand to the local water suppliers. 

Richard and his creative colleagues have taken water recycling into a new realm.  Instead of the giant over-engineered and expensive “purple pipe” programs that municipal systems have used, home-owners can now set up their own complete recycling program. In areas like New Mexico they can also make use of rainwater harvesting to supplement their daily wastewater and extend the benefits throughout their properties. 

For starters, Water Management systems calculate a water budget for each property.  How much rain will they get?  Where can it be collected?  What kind of passive features can direct it to the plants?  Then storage tanks are set in the ground to capture as much rainwater as possible.  This is used to “top off” the daily wastewater flow.  As Richard says “The only perrenial stream in New Mexico is the wastewater stream.” 

 

Sensing the need.

Instead of the typical “supply driven” municipal recycling programs, which are little more than clever ways to get rid of treated wastewater, Water Management develops “demand driven” systems.  Zones are set up on the property and controlled with sensors so they only take water when they need it.  If it is raining or a zone is saturated the sensor says “Store it” or maybe “Send it to another sector”. 

One homeowner in Albuquerque was able to keep more than a full acre of drought-stressed Pinyon pines around his home in good health with his SludgeHammer wastewater harvest systems.  He pointed out that the cost to cut down and remove the dying trees would have been higher than that of the entire wastewater treatment and reclamation system.  In the process he kept his land value and reduced the extreme fire danger the dying trees represented.

Today, waste-water is too important to waste.