Wednesday, April 23, 2008

"I learned to love the water when I was kid in Guam, an island in the Pacific Ocean where my dad served in the Navy," says Barry Chenkin, a Gaithersburg dad.

"I played at the beach all the time, and the water was so dazzling, just clear and clean -- kind of how we'd like to clean up our rivers here."

Chenkin now operates a rain-barrel company called Aquabarrel. He became interested in rain barrels after his wife asked if he knew how to build one to collect rainwater for their garden.

"I didn't, so I went to the Internet to learn how," he says. Not liking what he found there, he designed his own.

You can see some of his barrels in the garden shop at Washington National Cathedral.

"I wish I could say there's money to be made in the business," says Chenkin. "There isn't. But I feel good just helping do this one little thing for the environment."