By Hillary Strobel

What do we think about when we turn the shower on? Do we think about the water flowing out of the showerhead, or where it comes from, or where it is going? Or do we think of what it means to be able to take a hot shower at any given time, with clean water? Do we think, “water is part of a cycle,” as we step into the tub and the small part of the hydrologic cycle with which we have daily contact as urban dwellers streams over us and washes us?

Increasingly, people are thinking about this question, in creative and unorthodox ways. For the past seven years, the Greywater Guerrillas have been building greywater systems and constructed wetlands in urban backyards, as well as conducting workshops. One of the co-founders, Cleo Woelfle-Erskine, has worked on wetlands restoration at Heron’s Head Park in Bayview Hunter’s Point. They are self taught and amorphous in size, with folks scattered all over the West Coast calling themselves Greywater Guerrillas. It’s an enterprise working on the edges of modern urban infrastructure to help design an alternative for wasteful water practice. Co-founder Laura Allen says, “Using greywater encourages people to take responsibility for the water cycle. Greywater is a small piece of the [hydrologic] cycle, but when you start to look at it, it helps you to understand more about water.” Getting in touch with greywater and constructed wetlands, especially in urban settings, where people are far removed from the sources of their water, is one part of becoming more in line with natural hydrologic processes. So what is greywater, and how does it connect us with the hydrologic cycle?

“Greywater is water that flows down sink, shower, and washing machine drains, but not the toilet,” according to the Guerrillas’ soon-to-be-released book Dam Nation: Dispatches from the Water Underground. Laura is hopeful that the book will be available within the next year. This book is the extension of the popular zine that the Guerrillas published for roughly two years, featuring a history of Bay Area water politics which led to the damming of the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite that provides San Francisco with its urban water supply. The loss of the Hetch Hetchy Valley is considered by many to be an ecological disaster, reducing a once mighty water system to a concrete conduit which stretches hundred of miles from source to city. A side effect of this type of water transportation mentality is the utterly wasteful sewer systems that many cities have constructed. Greywater is thoughtlessly mixed with black water (water from toilets) and sewage, rendering a potential resource useless. The Guerrillas address this in their zine as well: included are detailed drawings of DIY plumbing alterations and self-build composting toilets, all designed to run greywater independently of the sewer system, and back into the soil.

“Greywater contains nitrates and phosphates from household cleaning products. If released untreated, these compounds pollute rivers and groundwater, but to garden plants, they are valuable nutrients. The easiest way to use greywater is to pipe it right outside and use it to water ornamental plants or fruit trees,” write the Guerrillas in their book. The group has two greywater systems in their own urban backyard in the East Bay. One, connected to the kitchen sink, is indeed a simple system: a long hole was cut in the house’s siding and a large drainpipe and bark-chip filtration box were installed which diverts tap water to a bathtub full of reeds, cattails, and bulrushes. The roots of these plants feed on organic compounds, removing them from the water itself, so that by the time the water flows out of the bathtub, it is clean enough to be reused. “The bathtub is attached to a perforated hose that is buried in this bed over here,” Laura says, indicating a large flower bed where the water from the kitchen sink flows. Grease from the sink is caught in the bark-chip biofilter before it gets to the tub. Grease becomes stuck to the chips as it pours over, while water is allowed to filter through. It is literally as simple as placing bark chips in an open topped box and letting the grease get trapped in the porous material. Every so often, the greasiest chips may be removed and composted, while fresh ones are put in the filter.

Recently, the Guerrillas hosted a workshop around the installation of their newest constructed wetland, in their backyard, which harvests water from their showers and diverts it to another bathtub, and which then flows to their bountiful vegetable crop and herb spiral. “We usually do a workshop at someone’s house whenever they want a greywater system installed,” Laura says, emphasizing the nature of performing several tasks at once for maximum benefit. The Guerrillas have installed around 15 systems around California, Seattle, and Detroit. While greywater may seem to many a natural and preferred method of dealing with waste water, installing wetlands made from salvaged bathtubs and reused pipes isn’t exactly standardized in building codes. The California Greywater building code, according to Laura, is much more expensive to follow, and more regulations apply: “Hence the word ‘guerrilla’ to describe what we are doing.”

Greywater “connects you personally to your own water use and the water cycle. When you use greywater in your house, then your house becomes more of a system too, and it becomes a really water aware place,” says Laura. This means not only being more aware financially about the benefits of reusing your water, but of the processes of cleaning greywater with nature’s own filters (roots and bark chips), and watching it flow from one system (the kitchen sink) to another system (a constructed wetland in a bathtub) to yet another system (a vegetable patch). A greywater system can be as simple as disconnecting your sink drains and placing a bucket under the open pipe. Once the bucket is full, use it to flush your toilets, or perhaps use it on your houseplants. Simple solutions such as this are excellent for apartment dwellers who do not have the space for wetlands. Of course, greywater systems can be as large and biologically complex as the wetlands at Heron’s Head Park. Either way, greywater use is an important and necessary way of preserving and respecting one of Earth’s resources.

For more information about the Greywater Guerrillas and upcoming events, visit their website at www.greywaterguerrillas.com.