OGDEN, Utah — People in Weber County are looking for ways to help water their lawns and gardens this year, while dealing with the impacts of a rough winter. Some of them lined up at Weber State University to pick up rain barrels to help collect rainwater.
Melanie Brooks ordered two of them. She picked her barrels up on Friday.
"We are taking this year very differently,” she said. “A rain barrel will help me keep watering things I’d already planned on planting this year."
The barrels are distributed through a program with the Utah Rivers Council. They partner with cities to subsidize the cost of these barrels. Amy Wicks, program director for Northern Utah with Utah Rivers Council, said they sold three times more barrels this year in Ogden than last year.
"You can get quite a bit of water from what we tend to think is an inconsequential storm but it actually does add up,” said Wicks.
From concerns about the Great Salt Lake possibly reaching historic low levels this year, the lack of snowpack runoff, and just potentially hot temperatures, people had different reasons for lining up.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard about the term 'eco-anxiety,' but I have that about every day,” Thomas Benhard said. “I feel really nervous about this year.”
Volunteers loaded barrels into cars, trucks and trailers. Brooks said she hopes the barrels collect enough water to help her garden and grow the flowers she wanted to. "I can get two rain barrels for this house, one in the front, one in the back, that’ll help me feel a little bit better about growing vegetables this year,” Brooks added.
Melissa Knoop picked up rain barrels, too, not for the first time, though.
"We picked up our first two rain barrels last year, and so when the drought happened this year, it was really great to be able to collect that rainwater, and the snowmelt off the roof, and then use that,” she said.
Wicks has been using rain barrels herself for years.
"I think rain barrels get you thinking about what are you using your water for, how much is coming from the sky and is that grass really valuable or that tree or garden really valuable,” she said. “So I think it maybe gets you thinking in a different way and kind of changes your relationship with water."
"Outdoor water use is one of the biggest things that we can control and limit our water on,” Brooks added.
