Water Harvesting Design

Water harvesting design captures, stores, and directs rainfall through landscape design rather than importing external water. Brad Lancaster's Tucson, Arizona work demonstrates: his neighborhood captures 100,000 gallons annually from a street that formerly shed runoff into drains. Key techniques include swales (contour trenches that infiltrate water), berms (raised mounds directing water to plants), rain gardens, and check dams. The design hierarchy: (1) maximize soil's water-holding capacity through organic matter; (2) shape land to slow and spread water; (3) store in soil and vegetation before tanks; (4) use impermeable catchment only as last resort. The principle: water is a resource to harvest, not a problem to drain.

When to use it

When valuable resources are being lost because they're treated as waste. When expensive infrastructure is being used to solve problems that landscape design (system design) could prevent. When evaluating resource management strategies and prioritizing passive over active solutions.

How it can help

Water harvesting teaches a fundamental resource management principle: capture resources at their source before they become waste. In business, this means capturing value at creation (first-party data, internal knowledge management, waste-stream utilization). The design hierarchy—maximize natural absorption before investing in infrastructure—provides a decision framework for any resource challenge. The principle that 'it's cheaper to slow water down than to speed it up' applies to information flow, organizational change, and supply chains.