Congregations go for `creation care,' one barrel at a time

WASHINGTON (RNS) It was the time in pre-marriage counseling when the
groom has to leave so the priest and the bride can talk alone. So Jamal
Kadri stepped outside Holy Name Catholic Church that rainy day in
Washington, D.C., and watched water pour from the church gutters and
seep into the sanctuary.

The idea hit him like a tidal wave: "My church needs a rain barrel."

Kadri, a water expert at the Environmental Protection Agency who had
recently converted to Catholicism, asked the priest if his contribution
to Holy Name's building fund could be a rain barrel to catch the water,
and channel it to a church garden.

He installed the 275-gallon barrel -- salvaged from his
father-in-law's farm -- last summer.

"Water has such a key role in the church -- in the sacraments,
baptism, the flood, Noah. And my professional background is in water,"
said Kadri. "It just made sense."

Parishioners and clergy across the nation are coming to similar
conclusions lately, as the creation care movement spreads from
congregation to congregation. Rain barrels, once ubiquitous on the
family farm, gave way to garden hoses decades ago. But the barrels --
now more likely to be made of recycled plastic than wood -- are making a
comeback.

Irrigating from a rain barrel saves water that would otherwise come
from a municipal water system. It also reduces runoff and erosion,
keeping bacteria, pesticides and other pollutants out of streams and
rivers. Stormwater runoff is the main cause of water quality problems in
the United States, according to the EPA.

No one keeps track of the numbers, but it has become increasingly
easy to find a church with a new rain barrel.

"Our kids came up with the idea for ours," said Rev. Heather
Shortlidge, associate pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Annapolis,
Md.

The children of the church two years ago made the rain barrel a
religious school project, decorated it with their colorful handprints
and asked the adults to install it. Now the barrel sits in the church
courtyard, supplying water to trees, bushes and flowers.

A second barrel waters the vegetable garden at the minister's
residence.

"It's really a simple way to have an environmental impact, and it
was our first small step to opening up a larger conversation about what
more we can do for the environment," said Shortlidge, whose church has
also switched to recycled paper and is considering solar panels for the
roof.

Rain barrels also save churches on their water bills, though most
houses of worship don't seem to tally up the savings. The initial
investment is minimal, with prices ranging from free -- when
environmentalists like Kadri donate the barrels and labor -- to about
$60 a barrel.

Other religious groups use rain barrels as fundraisers for
environmental projects or sell them at a discount to encourage water
conservation in the larger community:

-- In St. Louis, the teen group of the Jewish Environmental
Initiative raffled off three rain barrels this spring.

--In Mobile, Ala., the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer charges
members $50, and nonmembers $60, for rain barrels the environmental
committee makes by power washing donated 55-gallon drums that once held
glue.

-- In Glen Ellyn, Ill., just west of Chicago, the First Presbyterian
Church's environmental group has for the past few years sold 50-gallon
barrels for about $60.

"While many people around the world don't have access to clean
drinking water, we use it to wash our cars," said First Presbyterian
parishioner Cathy Colton, who bought a rain barrel for her Glen Ellyn
home last summer.

"It's recognition that God has made us stewards of creation and its
limited supplies," Colton said.

Next month (September), Dottie Yunger plans to install and bless a
rain barrel at the Washington City Church of the Brethren on Capitol
Hill, which she describes as "an old church building with huge water
bills."

Yunger, a Methodist minister-in-training, is also a riverkeeper for
the Anacostia -- a kind of "neighborhood watch" for the watershed around
the river, which carries high levels of pollutants as it flows through
the nation's capital.

The rain barrel will help control runoff at Brethren and lower its
water bills, she said. But it will also serve as a model for other
churches.

"Churches in particular are called upon to be stewards of the
environment," said Yunger. "We want to show people how they can be part
of the solution."