Drought sprouts a crop of barrels

Rain receptacles in serious demand

With Raleigh's recent move to tighter water restrictions, and widespread expectations that the drought will continue to make outdoor watering a finable offense in many places, demand for rain barrels has exploded.

Throughout the Triangle, plant nurseries, farm-supply stores and governments selling barrels say they sell out fresh shipments within a day -- sometimes less.

"I made a delivery to Raleigh this morning, and they were all gone within 20 minutes," said Chuck Rice of Sanford, who began making rain barrels out of used cucumber containers about a month ago. His barrels are especially sought after, as they cost only $36, compared with $85 and up for similar containers.

Rice buys the barrels for just a few dollars each from Mount Olive Pickle Co. The barrels come from India this time of year packed with tiny cucumbers on their way to becoming kosher fingerlings or gherkins. It's prohibitively expensive to send them back empty, said Janet Turner, whose job at the Mount Olive plant includes disposing of the containers.

"Eighteen months ago, we had 5,000 pickle barrels sitting out there in the yard, and we were saying, 'What are we going to do with these?' " Turner said.

Rice had a plan to use the containers to gather used restaurant grease for his fledgling biodiesel manufacturing plant in Sanford. When he got squeezed out of that business by heavy competition, he found himself with 500 barrels in his backyard, which smells vaguely like a salad bar.

A few weeks ago, he walked into a farm-supply store and noticed the $100 price tag on rain barrels. The barrels, set below a cut-off downspout, can fill in minutes in a heavy rain, and gardeners say the water is great for plants because it has fewer chemicals than treated water. Catching rainwater has the added benefit of slowing runoff into gutters and streams.

Rice bought a few pieces of hardware and some mesh to install over the top of his barrels to keep mosquitoes out, went home and made prototypes.

Now he and his wife, Johanna, work six days a week washing, outfitting and polishing the black barrels, which he then hauls to Raleigh's Solid Waste Services Department on Peace Street. The city resells them for the same price the Rices charge, enough to pay for materials and 20 to 30 minutes of labor each.

Dealers only, please

Turner, at the pickle plant, said the company would like to discourage individuals from coming to Mount Olive to get the barrels, and prefers to deal with large-scale operators such as Rice, who aren't trying to make a huge profit on something that is, essentially, industrial waste.

"Now," she said, "if we could sell pickles like we sell barrels, we'd be all right."

Raleigh and other municipalities also wholesale a variety of other rain barrels, some made in North Carolina of recycled plastic. Retailers also offer rain barrels, and larger cisterns, which require pumps to send the water where it's needed. Rain barrels usually are set on cinder blocks or landscaping stones to take advantage of gravity to create flow.

Holly Springs sold 100 rain barrels in a few days last week and expects another shipment at Bass Lake Park about noon today.

"We've got about 60 people on the waiting list right now, and we're supposed to get 100 in," said Trevor Johnson, who answered a half-dozen rain barrel calls in his first 15 minutes of work Thursday afternoon. "All I know is, when they get here, they're gone."

The waiting list includes Diane and Wiley Cotton, who want three for their somewhat frantic effort to save landscaping around the home they bought last summer and to let Diane have fresh tomatoes this summer.

"'I think what's going on here is what's been going on in West Texas and Oklahoma and Colorado and Arizona for a long time," said Wiley Cotton, who grew up in rural Arkansas where rain barrels were common. "If you don't get much rain, you learn to conserve what you get."

Where to get 'em

Cary has been selling rain barrels for years and will double its distribution from 50 to 100 per month for the next several months, said Marie Cefalo, the town's water conservation coordinator. Barrels are available at Herb Young, Bond Park and Middle Creek community centers in town, for as long as each shipment lasts. Cefalo suggests that residents call in advance.

Chapel Hill will have a barrel sale in April, said David Almond, a stormwater technician for the city. Johnston County will hold rain barrel workshops from 5 to 8 p.m. March 10 at the county's livestock arena. Residents should register in advance. For $35, each person attending the workshop gets a barrel and instructions on how to attach the hardware. The limit is one per household.

The Durham Soil and Water Conservation District office is pre-selling rain barrels for delivery from 9 a.m. to noon March 8 at the YMCA on Foster Street. Of about 300 65-gallon barrels the city has ordered, all but 32 were spoken for Thursday.

One of them has Beatrice Townsend's name on it. She called Thursday and reserved one of the $90 barrels so she can plant a few flowers in containers in her backyard come spring. "Everybody is going to be wanting them," Townsend said, "so I thought I'd better get one fast."