Being smart with water

Here in the Allen, a Dallas suburb, we're reminded yearly of the lack of rainfall, the abundance of sun and how much water we all consume through drinking, washing and watering.

Yet when it rains it often rains abundantly, even to the point where it's a hazard, particularly since everything is pretty flat here and the soil is full of clay and not absorbent.

Many of the public schools in Allen have windmills that I'm told generate electricity for the school. In the same vein, water catchment systems should be put on the roofs of these buildings. The roofs are almost all completely flat and water that is drained from them come out in a relatively small number of pipes a little off the ground.

Bermuda, out of necessity, practices catchment like this. It would understandably be tough for every resident to participate in water conservation this way, but schools have an opportunity to save and to educate the community by saving water in this way.