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W

hen it rains, it stores.

That’s the idea behind the many rainbarrels you may soon be seeing in the area. Forty of them went home with Oriental-area residents after NC State’s Cooperative Extension Service held workshops at Town Hall on Friday.

Barrels rolled out. Some of the new rainbarrel owners.

Rainbarrels have been in great demand in the past year, because of the drought in North Carolina. Charlie Humphrey, environmental education coordinator with the Craven County Agricultural Extension Service, says he used to be able to get the barrels themselves for free from sources such as Mt. Olive pickle company, or soda bottlers. Now, because of the rainbarrel revival, there is a 6-8 week wait, and a 5-10 dollar pricetag per barrel.

Charlie Humphrey and Amy Andrews with the Cooperative Extention Service brought the 40 barrels to Town Hall in a horse trailer on Tuesday and spent a few hours cleaning them.

Friday’s workshop at Town Hall evolved from a talk Humphrey gave in Oriental earlier this winter about creating rain gardens to capture stormwater runoff. In low-lying parts of town where small ponds form naturally after a rain, rain barrels seemed like they could be of even more use, by saving up water to use later.

The possiblity of a workshop was floated here at TownDock, and response was great. Dozens of people attended Friday. And many more rainbarrels would have sold had there been a bigger supply.

(One feature that made the rainbarrels so sought after was their price: $35. Some participants said they’d seen commercially-made rainbarrels selling for three and four times as much.)

Charlie Humphrey drills a hole for a spigot.

Charlie Humphrey, along with Daniel Simpson of the Pamlico Extension Service Office made most of the rain barrels before the workshop began. But they demonstrated how folks could make them themselves with not much more than a drill, a spigot, some washers and screening.

And then the spigot is attached, though sometimes not very easily.

Some of the fittings have to be tightened from the inside.

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Posted Saturday April 5, 2008 by Melinda Penkava