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Of interest was your recent article concerning the local water shortage and the possible use of cisterns in Hobe Sound and Jupiter Island. It stated that cisterns have been used for “hundreds of years.” The fact is, cisterns have been used for thousands of years, since pre-biblical times.

As a resident of St. Thomas for a third of a century, I can attest to the use of cisterns on all the Caribbean islands. Except for the few town centers and major hotels where desalinization plants provide potable water, all the homes use cisterns. The majority of residences in the West Indies — from huts to mansions — have been built on hillsides with cisterns below. These are like big basements with no doors or windows. Water is supplied to kitchens and baths under pressure by simple household pumps. Really old places, built before electricity was available, have above-ground cisterns.

I authored the Virgin Islands building code decades ago. It called for 10 gallons of cistern capacity for every square foot of roof catchment area. At 8.5 gallons per square foot, a home with 3,000 square feet of roof area should have a 25,000-plus gallon cistern. At an average of 40 inches of rain annually, that roof should catch approximately 85,000 gallons of fresh water a year — more than enough for a family of five or six.

Incidentally, “gray water” — water collected on driveways, parking areas, courtyards and roads — is used for irrigation and stored in separate cisterns. Very few homes have or need to collect of gray water. A properly built cistern keeps sunlight off water — otherwise algae will form — and inlets and outlets are tightly screened to keep mosquitoes from breeding.

Cisterns are expensive, but not inordinately. If South Florida homes had individual cisterns, the South Martin Regional Utility would soon go out of business. 

Roger F. Moran

Hobe Sound