Cistern in park saves water for city flowers and plants

A new 3,400-gallon plastic tank near Glenburnie Park will allow the city to conserve water as employees begin to water trees and flowers this spring.

Parks Superintendent John Albert said New Bern's parks department used a $14,000 grant from the N.C. Division of Water Quality to build a cistern in November. It installed the water-catching tank on a maintenance building on Glenburnie Drive.

When rain falls on the building's roof, pipes carry the water underground and into the plastic tank. Workers built a three-sided wooden fence around the tank, so the device does not ruin the visual enjoyment of visitors at the nearby park, Albert said.

"Rain is being captured from 2,400 square feet of roofing," he said. "It became active in December, and we've already collected 7,000 gallons of rainwater. It takes about two inches of rain to fill our cistern."

City employees flow the rainwater into a tank truck and use it to water the city's trees and flowers.

"It's self-supporting all of our water needs right now," Albert said. "When flowers really arrive in May, it will kick in. We'd much rather water our plants with Mother Nature's water than from our well. We'll try to keep that water truck full, so we can use the tank to collect as much as we can."

The recent drought showed environmental groups in eastern North Carolina that they needed to conserve water, because the groundwater levels are low, said Charlie Humphrey, an agent with the Cooperative Extension Service. The Extension Service helped New Bern parks with the cistern.

"In counties like Craven, we've got to reduce our water consumption by 25 percent this year," Humphrey said. "It's been an initiative of Cooperative Extension to really educate people on water-saving practices."

Three years ago, the Extension Service installed a cistern at its agriculture building in Clarks. The City of Kinston uses a cistern to supply water for washing its vehicles and Jones County has a 1,000-gallon cistern  on a government building in Trenton, Humphrey  said.

"We're trying to promote them for businesses, too," he said. "It would be nice to see developers use this when they construct new homes. They could enclose one away from the homes, so it doesn't detract from the aesthetics of the area."

Albert said cisterns also improve water quality for the area around them. He said the cistern on Glenburnie Drive will keep rainwater from washing down a hill and into the nearby Neuse River.

"It's saving the erosion of our road and yard," he said. "It also saves all of that sediment that's going into the river."