<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><p class="MsoNormal">Excerpt: <span style="text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: 0.75pt;" class="">THE CITY OF </span><span style="background-color: white;" class="">Tucson, Arizona, officially got serious about rainwater harvesting five years ago, viewing it as a cost-effective tool to reduce demand for potable water.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;">In 2012, the city’s water utility, Tucson Water, began offering <a href="https://www.tucsonaz.gov/water/rainwater-harvesting-rebate" class=""><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;" class="">rebates</span></a> to its residential customers to subsidize installation of rainwater catchment systems, both to divert water onto landscaping and store it in cisterns.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;">Later, it expanded the program to include grants and loans to help low-income households harvest rainwater. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;">Now it is one year into a three-year study to find out how effective those subsidies have been, and the results look good. Gary Woodard, a consultant with <a href="http://elmontgomery.com/company/staff/gary-woodard/" class=""><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;" class="">Montgomery & Associates</span></a> in Tucson, is leading the study. He says the first year of data gathering confirms that residential rainwater harvesting has reduced the city’s overall potable water demand. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;">And it hasn’t merely reduced demand equal to the size of the rainwater harvesting systems, but significantly more.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white;">To learn more about the results so far, Water Deeply recently spoke with Woodard, a longtime Tucson resident who previously served as deputy director of the Water Resources Research Center at the University of Arizona.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.newsdeeply.com/water/community/2018/01/09/in-tucson-subsidies-for-rainwater-harvesting-produce-big-payoff?utm_source=Water+Deeply&utm_campaign=be369dcaa8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_01_11&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2947becb78-be369dcaa8-117800933" class="">https://www.newsdeeply.com/water/community/2018/01/09/in-tucson-subsidies-for-rainwater-harvesting-produce-big-payoff?utm_source=Water+Deeply&utm_campaign=be369dcaa8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_01_11&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2947becb78-be369dcaa8-117800933</a></p></body></html>