The Umbrella: Pre-spring 2022
A catch-all newsletter of resources,
events, media, and more
from Brad Lancaster
Check out the newly overhauled and expanded Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond website:
www.HarvestingRainwater.com
I’ve added a lot of new material, updated & edited old material, and overhauled the navigation in hopes that is now a more inviting, effective, & useful website for you.
I’ve also revised and improved the website’s many image galleries, and added watermarks to the images so it is easier for those using the images in educational presentations to give credit to the images’ source!
Please link to the new site!
And please give me your feedback on what does or does not work for you at admin@harvestingrainwater.com
My intention is to keep evolving the site to make it more useful for you.
And be sure to let me know if there are any broken, missing, or incorrect links on the site so I can fix them!
In late summer 2020 I resigned from Desert Harvesters, an organization I co-founded in 2003
I am continuing related work with efforts I began before (and continued during the Desert Harvesters years) with the Dunbar Spring Neighborhood Foresters.
Check out the website: www.DunbarSpringNeighborhoodForesters.org
Its a great resource for anyone or any neighborhood in the growing/stewarding of rain-irrigated, community-building, native food forests and reciprocal life.
Anyone and everyone, no matter what neighborhood you live in, is welcome to all our events, and invited to start their own neighborhood’s forester group!
Brad Lancaster awarded Citizen Forester of the Year in 2021
by the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management.
Get the bigger story here
Assessment of the City of Tucson’s commercial water-harvesting ordinance
In 2018, Ann Audrey and I were hired by the City of Tucson to do an extensive assessment of the city’s commercial water-harvesting ordinance. I am still awaiting permission from the City to make our report public.
In the meantime, I’ll say this…
We found it was very easy for developers to meet and exceed the intent of the ordinance, whereby commercial properties must meet at least 50% of their irrigation demand with passively (no water-harvesting tanks or pumps needed) harvested rainwater and stormwater.
But in many cases, new developments were failing, sometimes horribly, because the ordinance was not being adequately enforced, nor promoted.
There is currently action within the city to address this. I’ll update you as things progress.
The new full-color edition of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1 wins another book award
Get the story here
The new full-color editions of both Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1 and 2 win more book awards
Get the story here
If you’ve read, and enjoyed, the new full-color editions of my books please rate and review them online
5-star ratings and good reviews really helps improve the books’ visibility and accessibility. You can do so on the books’ webpages of various on-line sellers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble (even if you did not buy the book from them). Goodreads is another great site to leave ratings and reviews. Once on the link, scroll down and you’ll see my books and the review links. Reviews can be as short as a single word, sentence, or paragraph.
Currently reprinting another 19,000 copies of the new full-color editions of my books Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volumes 1 and 2
It has been a stressful process due to the worldwide paper shortage, and overbooked printers.
It took months to secure a printing contract with a domestic printer.
There are fewer domestic book printers today since I began publishing my books in 2006, since so many U.S. publishers now choose to print their books in China, resulting in a number of domestic printers going bankrupt.
But in the end I got a contract with Lakeside Book.
Since they are a U.S. printer (I always use U.S.-based printers), my books are not getting held up in shipping containers coming from overseas.
And my books have a much lower carbon skid mark and energy consumption in their shipping because the transportation distance of the books is so much less.
It also took months to secure the paper needed for the books, and I was not able to get the higher recycled content I was going for, since it simply was not available on the market.
Nonetheless, I was at least able to secure 30% post-consumer recycled Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified paper in the end.
Please recycle your paper and cardboard, so there will be more recycled paper and cardboard on the market.
Thankfully, with the lack of recycled paper and gnarled supply chains in 2021, there are now new efforts working to enhance the recycling of paper in the U.S.
Please spread the word on how to buy my books direct from me at deep discount
By cutting out the costs of middle men I can direct more resources from direct book sales to the creation of more books, revisions, and other resources such as those on this website. And when you buy direct from me, you also get signed copies! See: here
Work continues on the Spanish-language edition of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1
The book is titled Cosecha de Agua de LLuvia para Zonas Áridas y Más Allá, and will be published as an eBook to make it more accessible and affordable, since eBooks avoid paper, warehousing, and shipping costs. This is key, as the Spanish edition will be longer than the English edition since Spanish tends to be wordier than English (and often poetic).
The book has now been fully translated into Spanish, and we are beginning the process of laying out/designing the book.
Hopefully, the Spanish edition will be available later this year.
I sold the rights for a Turkish-language edition of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1
The Turkish publisher is TÜBİTAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey). If all goes to plan/contract, the Turkish edition should be available before 2024.
The eBook edition of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 2 is now available
For more info and purchase links see here
For info and purchase links for the eBook edition of Volume 1 see here
Recent blog essays by Brad
The Rains Are Coming—Are Your Street-side Basin Inlets Ready or Clogged?
The Abundance Growing from the Water-, Soil-, and Fertility-Harvesting of Bouwas Mawara in Zimbabwe
Rainwater Spiritual Song Now Available for Listening, Purchase, and Download
New or expanded social media outlets of Brad