Basic Needs / Summer Speaker Series

How do the choices we make to satisfy our basic needs for food, water, shelter, and clothing impact the health of our communities and our environment?

To foster dialogue around some of today’s most pressing - and most tangible - environmental issues, The Ecology center is proud to announce our first Summer Speaker Series, to be held in San Juan Capistrano, California.

The purpose of the series is to provide a foundation for making decisions that have a positive ecological impact. To that end, we are providing a forum where the residents of Orange County can explore these crucial topics with cutting-edge thinkers from a variety of backgrounds.

May 11 / Water

Brad Lancaster author of "Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands"

"Since 1993 I’ve run a successful permaculture consulting, design, and education business focused on integrated and sustainable approaches to landscape design, planning, and living. And as I live in the dryland environment, rainwater harvesting has long been one of my specialties and a passion. At home my brother and I harvest over 100,000 gallons of rainwater a year on a 1/8-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.

I started writing the Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond series as a way to empower my clients and my community to make such positive change in their own lives and back yards by harvesting rainwater.

I 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. I believe we all can become beneficial stewards of the land, and partners in the ecosystem in which we live, and I believe that by harvesting rainwater sustainably we can all begin to transform our households from consumers of resources to producers of resources"