Illustration by Josh Hagler

We are all too familiar with the Tucson monsoon that lasts for 13 minutes but leaves the campus submerged as roads turn into streams and parking lots turn into ponds. This is water that shouldn't simply go down the gutter.

The Sonoran Desert receives less than 12 inches of rain a year. That is not very much, and as we are all too familiar with, most of it comes down all at once. And for some reason, it always comes in between classes.

It doesn't take a hydrology major to see that UA has a water-drainage problem, and we don't need a graduate in arid land studies to slap us in the face and tell us that the flash floods on campus are nothing less than a river of gold.

The University of Arizona started out as just a lonely Old Main in a myriad of cactuses but has now spread out across 352 acres. Don't worry, I'll do the math for you: 352 acres is 5,111,040 square feet. Now, let's take that number and multiply it with the amount of rainfall (1 foot), times 0.90 to account for evaporation and other losses and by 7.5 gallon conversion factor ... um, hold on. Ta da! 34,499,520 gallons fall atop the UA every year. Not bad.

Another curious fact is that the engineers who built Speedway Boulevard messed up. They were supposed to construct the road two feet lower than the campus, but instead, they made it two feet higher. The rainwater from Speedway Boulevard now runs down an alleyway onto Second Street, then out to Park Avenue.

The point is when it rains, there is a ton of usable water around the campus. Thinking along those lines, a student and faculty research group called "Save HOH" was formed on campus. Headed by the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA) and the Soil, Water and Environmental Science Department, they came together to find out what the deal was with the continual wasting of all the rainwater on campus.

After all, we do live in a desert.

It is hard to criticize the university when it comes to wasting water. We do a fairly good job conserving. Our campus isn't plagued with tons and tons of grass (ahem · ASU), but rather arid landscape. In the last several years, the UA has shifted from being completely dependent on groundwater to using Central Arizona Project water for irrigation. But the fact that we are one of the notable research universities in the nation makes it a bit embarrassing that we are not forerunners in inventing and using means to collect rainwater.

Collection is more commonly called water harvesting - the capture and storage of rainfall to irrigate plants or to supply water for people and animals. Adapting gutters, digging berms and assembling tanks and pumps are only a few techniques used to catch precipitation. We now inhabit the lands once used by Native Americans who incorporated the ancient practice into their daily routine.

Rainfall was a celebration, not a hassle. It led to sustainable living.

The student-run research group focused first on the new Integrated Learning Center. Jim Riley was the first to realize that the new underground structure had the potential to collect and store precipitation. Incorporated into the design was an underground storage tank equipped with a pump. The problem was that the water was just going to be poured out onto the nearby street.

There had to be a better way to use that water.

Not only could the ILC be adapted to utilize rainwater, but theoretically, anywhere on campus could be. The next amazing fact is that if you look at the university from above, there are approximately 2.5 million square feet of rooftop. Using the same calculation as before, there is the potential to harvest 16,875,000 gallons a year off the buildings. UA currently consumes about 400 million gallons a year. It doesn't take an economics student to recommend to UA President Peter Likins that utilizing rainwater could save the school tons of money. It would also help to wean the university off of the depleting aquifer.

Before you have time to say "budget cut," let me add that recessions are the best time for planning. Then, when the money comes, UA will be ready to capture the next August monsoon.

It is time to act like we live in a desert.