Before this, about half the households on this island stored rainwater in drums and the other half carried from the standpipes. In a dry March that meant queues at four in the morning.
The project installed one hundred tanks of two thousand five hundred litres, with guttering and a first flush diverter on each, over fourteen months. The diverter was the detail that mattered: the first water off a roof here carries dust and salt, and without one the tank is spoiled in the first shower after a dry month.
The difficulty was fairness. Twenty two households had bought their own tanks over the years and the first plan gave them nothing, which was put to the council at an open meeting in fairly plain terms. The answer agreed was that those households received the guttering, the diverter and a second tank where there was room, which cost about a fifth of a full installation and settled it.
Four households could not be reached at all, two because the roof was too small to collect anything useful and two because nobody was living there. The council recorded both reasons in the register rather than leaving a gap, and one of the four has since been done after the house was rebuilt.
Since the tanks, the standpipes have not gone below the six hours a day that the February arrangement sets, in either of the two dry seasons.
