How Tucson, Arizona is facing up to a megadrought
In front of Val Little’s one-story, adobe home near downtown Tucson, in southern Arizona, a small but proud sign stands in the lawn. It reads: “This house harvests the rain.” Every couple of months, 68-year-old Little climbs up a short ladder to clear the leaves from her home’s gutters. … The downspout funnels the rainwater that falls on her rooftop into a 1,300-gallon (4,900-litre) plastic cistern in her backyard. She has two of them, and in late September both were almost full, fed by the abundant summer monsoon rains. Little is not alone. Over the past 15 years or so thousands of residents across Tucson, a mostly parched desert city where barely 12 inches (30cm) of rain falls in an average year, have turned to rainwater harvesting to meet some of their household needs.