POSTED: Monday, December 7, 2009 at 05:16 PM PT
BY: Justin Carinci
Architect Nir Pearlson is part of a committee helping the DEQ write rules for gray-water reuse. (Photo courtesy Nir Pearlson)
A process to replace Oregon’s water reuse laws could give a boost to the state’s green-building industry.
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has named a 15-member committee to write rules for capturing and reusing drain and laundry water outside.
Until this year, reusing gray water for irrigation was against the law. Oregon codes made no distinction between gray water and wastewater, or sewage.
“Anybody who wanted to reuse gray water had to treat it like wastewater,” said Ron Doughten, DEQ’s water reuse program coordinator. That involved getting permits and building an on-site treatment plant, complete with testing and disinfection.
The permit application alone would cost $6,000, with an additional $1,500 per year for DEQ fees. That isn’t exactly practical for a small business or homeowner, Doughten said.
“Nobody actually asked for one of those, because it doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said.
The law itself didn’t make sense, said Phil Roach, senior plumbing designer with Solarc Architecture and Engineering, which specializes in sustainable design. “I don’t see how we can not use gray water at all,” said Roach, a member of the new committee.
“It just makes sense to be able to use at least a mildly treated gray water for nonpotable use,” he said.
Forbidding uses of gray water kept designers from creating systems to allow water reuse for irrigation, washing, or any other outdoor uses. Indoor uses of gray water, such as flushing toilets, are regulated under the state’s plumbing code. The state Building Codes Division changed that code last year to allow some indoor use of gray water.
Nir Pearlson, a Eugene-based architect, will also serve on the Graywater Rulemaking Advisory Committee. Writing new rules for gray water will give green designers more options, Pearlson said.
“I would love to be able to tell my residential or commercial clients, ‘Here’s another thing we can do for you: We can actually capture a certain percentage of gray water from your building,’ ” he said.
Growing up where water is scarce formed Pearlson’s perspective on conservation. “I come from Israel, where we look at water in a whole different way than they do here,” he said. “Water is obviously a very precious and essential and important resource.”
“You’ll find that, like in any manufacturing process, people always like to make sure all the resources are used in a very efficient way,” Pearlson said. “And the way we pass water through is not very efficient.”
Just because using gray water has been against the law in Oregon, it doesn’t mean no one does it, said Brenna Bell, one of the organizers of the successful effort to change Oregon’s law in the 2009 legislative session. These “guerrilla gray-water systems” show the innovative thinking Oregonians can apply to water conservation.
“People have done very creative things,” Bell said. “They’ve made ponds to catch the water with plants to clean it.”
Bell, an environmental attorney and volunteer with Tryon Life Community Farm, said organizers wrote the law to require that the rule-making committee include people representing a wide range of interests. Although Oregon lags behind other states that allow use of gray water, Bell said, the state has a chance to create a better system.
“Not many states have creative coding around (gray water),” she said. “People look to us to be the ones with sustainable solutions, and I think there is an opportunity for us to do that.”
The law should be performance-based she said; that is, regulating the result instead of the process. “Since we’re just coming into gray water, opening the door to creative systems is the way to do it,” Bell said.
While gray water doesn’t have the same pathogens found in sewage, there can be some dangers, Doughten of the DEQ said. Rinsing meat, for example, sends potentially harmful bacteria down the drain and into a gray-water system.
“Our biggest concerns will largely be concerns DEQ always has,” Doughten said, “(such as) ensuring that gray water is used in a manner that has some benefit to the environment, but … is still protective of public health and any environmental concerns.”
Those are some of the issues the committee will consider at its first meeting Thursday. The new rules for use of gray water could be in place by late 2011.
Roach, a longtime journeyman plumber, knows how plumbing systems should work. He’s approaching the new rules cautiously.
Washing cars with gray water, for example, might cause people to come into contact with mist. And if there’s contact, Roach wants to make sure people are safe.
“Foremost, you have to protect people from making a system that makes them sick,” he said.
