About Brad Lancaster
Since 1993, Brad Lancaster has run a successful permaculture consulting,
design, and education business focused on integrated and sustainable approaches
to landscape design, planning, and living. As he lives in the dryland
environment, rainwater harvesting and greywater irrigation have long been both
a specialty and a passion. Through his business, Lancaster has been able to share that passion
and many of the fun innovations and daily adventures that come about from
striving to live more sustainably and comfortably.
At home, Lancaster and his brother harvest over 100,000 gallons of rainwater
a year on a 1/8th acre urban lot and adjoining right-of-way. This harvested
water is then turned into living air conditioners of food-bearing shade trees,
abundant gardens, and a thriving landscape incorporating wildlife habitat,
beauty, edible and medicinal plants, and more. Such sheltering landscapes cool
buildings by 20°F, reduce water and energy bills, and require little more than
rainwater to thrive. Outside the home, he has helped others do the same and
enabled clients to create ephemeral springs, raise the level of water wells,
and shade and beautify neighborhood streets by harvesting their street runoff
in adjacent tree wells.
Lancaster
started writing his first book, Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and
Beyond as a way to further empower his clients and community to make such
positive change in their own lives and back yards by harvesting rainwater. He
wanted to provide an accessible resource that explains what water harvesting
is, how to do it appropriately, and how to modify it to the unique conditions
of everyone’s own site.
Lancaster believes
we all can become beneficial stewards of the land, and partners in the
ecosystem in which we live. He also believes that by sustainably harvesting
rainwater we can begin to transform our households from consumers of resources
to producers of resources. Drawing on his years of teaching, consulting,
designing, on-the-ground implementation, and learning from others, Lancaster will offer his
audience a clear and simple process to assess and design their own water
harvesting landscapes.
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