h2oqa

1.  Its the right thing to do!

2. Your garden likes rainwater better than treated water.

3.  Helps local watershed by catching water off your roof.  Letting water flash off your property lets the water go straight to the inlets which pipe it directly to the streams.  The streams as a result erode and over widen.  This creates lots of problems.   When more water discharges down a stream than had in the past as a result of development (i.e. homes, buildings and roadways) it throws the stream out of balance.  The stream may go through many phases before it becomes stabile again and stops discharging sediment downstream.  I however believe that with development always increasing many streams are not stabilizing and are continually gradually eroding and over widening.  In order to stop this we can do our part and catch our rainwater with rain barrels and rain gardens in our back yards.  This prevents the water from flashing down the inlets that pipe direct to streams and cause erosion and destabilization of our streams and thus adding nutrients into the downstream watershed such as the Chesapeake Bay, etc.  Another even more serious reason is that this also puts our water and waste water infrastructure at risk because when the streams over widen they expose sanitary sewer manholes and pipes as well as our water supply pipes become exposed.  This puts the whole system at risk.  It causes our taxes to go up because rebuilding the stream/protecting pipes and manholes costs our utility companies millions of dollars.  Even worse it causes sewage leaks to our streams and severely pollutes our watershed i.e. Chesapeake Bay.  You would be surprised if you knew how common this really is.

When we catch the water and let it go back into the ground slowly it recharges the groundwater.  This recharging of groundwater is what creates base flow in streams.  Base flow in streams is good.  The water quality is better when water enters the stream this way, it is cooler and creates the right type of benthic communities (i.e.) bugs, and beneficial microbiology.  Fish like this kind of stuff. Plus the ground is a great place to store water and release slowly so that the flashing stops and so does the eroding and so does the exposing of the sewage pipes and thus the sewage leaks would greatly decrease and hopefully stop and this would make for less pollution and nutrients in the Bay and less algae blooms and less fish kills and maybe just maybe we could swim in places like Baltimore City Inner Harbor one day in the future.  Probably not 2020 but sometime after a lot of clean up.  So if you would like to do your small part call me at (443) 909-0739 and I would be very happy to help you install rain boxes and or a rain garden.  This is not the only solution but it is a good start.  Also we could recycle your grey water from your shower and sinks and reuse for flushing your toilets.  Lots of options available.  I will be adding more to the website soon.  Please stay posted and call with any questions.

Sincerely,

George Brehm

Owner H2OQA

Email: georgeabrehmiv@gmail.com

Cell: (443) 909-0739