Karan Barnhill, Evansville Stormwater Coordinator, is dragging mostly empty 55-gallon rain barrels to vehicles as they pull up.
“We got a lot of people wanting them; I'm running low,” she said, just before maneuvering one into the back seat of a sedan. She has to clarify to some that it’s one barrel per household.
Barnhill has 160 barrels from Coca Cola, and a line of cars snaking around the “back 40” parking lot behind the Vanderburgh County Civic Center, Thursday July 20. She actually has double the original amount planned, and they’re being unloaded from a semi trailer by Coca-Cola employee Thad Petitt.
There are SUVs, pickups, sedans and a tiny Smart Car driven by Joanne Jochum. She plans to hold her new rain barrel in the cargo area with a rope.
“I use them for watering my plants; it’s really good and in my garden,” she said, adding that it indeed saves her a lot of tap water.
This is the 13th year of the program, and Barnhill estimates 1,500 to 2,000 barrels have been given away since the beginning. These are former syrup barrels which have been rinsed and are mostly devoid of water.
She started the project with the help of Coca Cola. The goal is to educate the public, and conserve water. As Stormwater Coordinator, she also wants to take some burden off the city’s combined stormwater and sanitary sewer system.
“‘Combo’ system means that your sanitary sewer, which is your toilets, and your bathtubs, and your sinks, all go to your sanitary and then you have the storm water from the sky that goes into the same pipe,” she said between loading barrels into vehicles. “And that same pipe carries it all the way to the treatment plant to be treated before it's released.”
Sometimes the system would become overwhelmed and divert wastewater into the river.
“Rain barrels help collect the stormwater water off of the rooftops and it decreases localized flooding,” Barnhill said. “It also is good to collect your rainwater just to conserve and to reduce your water bill.”
Paul Doss is professor of geology and environmental science at University of Southern Indiana.
“Any little step to reduce that amount of runoff is going to help that (wastewater) system,” he said. “(The city) also just invested a whole bunch of money in trying to separate that stormwater drainage from the sanitary sewage drainage to try to prevent that overflow event from happening.”
He’s talking about the $12.5 million Toyota Trinity Stormwater Park project underway in downtown Evansville.
According to the city, it will divert 26-million gallons of rainwater per year from a 9-square block area to an underground basin, where it will slowly filter through sand and gravel into the earth.
Barnhill said flooding downtown was common until rain gardens and underground work completed near the civic center. “That intersection would flood every time it rains,” she said, referring to Locust and MLK.
While Evansville and the state of Indiana are rain barrel friendly, they aren’t always legal everywhere in the US. Indiana and surrounding states allow it. Some states allow municipalities to limit their use, and some states limit their use statewide, such as arid regions.
“The point behind it is if you capture it, then you are preventing it from recharging the common groundwater resource,” Doss said. “So in other words, if you capture rain on your roof, you are preventing the underground, the aquifer from having access to that water. I think that is the legal argument behind it.”
Nevada and Colorado are the only states to limit rainwater collection, according to the Office of Federal Energy Management Program.
Doss said some old homes like his were built with cisterns to capture rainwater prior to wells and city water. He said there are also island nations that rely on cisterns for a large amount of fresh drinking water. Now he just captures water for his vegetable garden.
Back at the rain barrel giveaway, Barnhill calls out, “That’s the last one,” to the still long line of cars waiting for a barrel.
Less than an hour before starting, Barnhill is out of rain barrels and 90 people waiting have to leave disappointed. She hands them informational slips with her contact information.
“This is so exciting for me, this is one of my best days,” she said handing out slips with instructions on painting the barrels if people wish. She promises to put them on a list to get their barrels as they become available.
This is the second time she’s run out, and the most people who’ve shown up to a giveaway.
Next year she says she’ll limit it to one barrel per vehicle — not just per household — and better organize the line to discourage drivers from cutting.
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