Water-conserving cisterns run afoul of Eldorado rules

Aug. 1—Marc Bedner shakes his head in disbelief while standing by his two rain-catching cisterns placed at an outside corner of his home in Eldorado.

He glances at the brown tanks, both connected to a gutter on his roof, and says he's baffled the homeowners association wants them shrouded with fencing or trees.

Another option would be to bury them underground, but he says that would be too expensive.

The implication is these tanks, which enable him to use rainwater that otherwise would drain onto the sidewalk and be wasted, are an eyesore that must be hidden, Bedner said.

"I don't think they're unsightly," he said.

The cisterns don't breach Eldorado's covenants but rather run afoul the architectural guidelines drafted in the 1990s, before the region became gripped in a two-decade-long megadrought.

Bedner said the Eldorado Community Improvement Association hasn't said outright to remove the cisterns, though the implication is he must get them out of sight one way or the other.

Rosemary Lowe, his wife, said she can't understand why the cisterns are being treated like visual clutter. Instead, they should be viewed as a good example of how to conserve water amid climate change, she said.

"I don't know why they have to be hidden," Lowe said. "Why does conservation have to be hidden? It is a climate change issue, and we have to face it."

Carol Sanguinetti, the Eldorado community improvement board's president, wrote in an email that the intention is being misconstrued.

"We are not asking them to remove the cisterns nor are we discouraging water conservation," Sanguinetti wrote. "We are asking them to comply with the architectural guidelines, which require that the cisterns be screened in some way like with a fence or vegetation and be painted to match the house."

In this semirural section of Eldorado, homes are spaced hundreds of yards apart. No one can see the cisterns unless they come up to the house, Bedner said.

Bedner said they moved to Eldorado about 15 years ago and for a long time used two 50-gallon rain barrels, but they often overflowed during a healthy downpour.

They replaced them with the pair of 260-gallon cisterns about five years ago, he said.

Last week, one torrential night-time storm filled the containers.

"You might think this is overkill for the amount of rain we get," Bedner said, referring to the cisterns' size. "But when we get rain, we get rain."

The cisterns are part of a basic, gravity-fed irrigation system, Bedner said. He twisted a spigot on one cistern, sending water through a hose to irrigate trees in the front yard.

Although the cisterns have been in place for years, it wasn't until recently that they caught the attention of a code enforcer. The man is employed by HOAMCO, an Arizona company that manages properties for homeowners associations.

The couple soon learned the cisterns violate a rule that restricts the size of above-ground storage containers.

Bedner said he checked Eldorado's covenants before he installed the tanks and they didn't mention cisterns. He never thought to look at architectural guidelines because in his mind he was adding apparatus and not making structural changes.

Bedner and Lowe presented their case at a recent community improvement board meeting.

Board members were open initially to letting the couple simply paint the brown cisterns to match the lighter beige of their house. But the HOAMCO compliance officer objected, insisting they must build a barricade or plant trees to hide the containers, Bedner said.

The officer said Eldorado rules were less stringent than at the considerably more expensive Las Campanas Estates, where residents must bury all water storage units underground. The median price of a Las Campanas home is $2.2 million, according to Realty.com, while the median at Eldorado is $729,000.

Bedner and Lowe say they are semi-retired and can't afford to build a wall or bury the cisterns underground. She works part-time as a nurse, and he proofreads during legislative sessions.

Xubi Wilson, an Eldorado resident, said he built a wooden barricade around a large cistern, using bark sheaths sliced from logs at a sawmill.

He did all the work himself, including rummaging through the mill for the boards and assembling the enclosure. The scrap lumber cost $250, he said.

However, Wilson noted he did the project a long time ago.

"My guess, if you went to Home Depot and bought the dog-eared cedar or whatever they want you to use, it's going to be expensive," Wilson said. "If you're hiring someone else to do the work, it could get very, very expensive."

Lowe said adding trees would be a cheaper alternative, but the last time she checked, the Eldorado association barred new plantings to save on water.

Besides, the sun bakes the area where the cisterns stand, creating a hot zone in which no saplings would survive, she said.

Bedner said they're waiting for the board to make a ruling. If the board decides they must do anything more than paint the cisterns, they'll get rid of them, he said.

It will end this bit of water conservation in Eldorado, a community whose water supply is diminishing, Lowe said.

"That's sad," she said.