Tao Fellowship’s Sedona Mago Retreat Center – Acclaimed Water Management

Tao Fellowship

In 2008, the new Mayor of Sedona, Rob Adams, and his wife Christine made their first visit to the Sedona Mago Retreat Center at the invitation of Tao Fellowship. After a tour that emphasized the way water was wisely used at Mago Retreat, May Adams praised the Tao Fellowship for practicing what it preaches in the area of water management.

The City of Sedona and Tao Fellowship both realize that water is a precious resource in a dessert area like Sedona. While the City is still trying to work out how best to create a system of fresh water, waste water and its applications, Tao Fellowship from day #1 has a goal of optimizing the total system of water on its property at Mago Retreat.

Mayor Adams admitted that he was highly impressed with how all the elements of the water management system fit together to benefit Tao Fellowship’s Mago Retreat, the people who live and visit, and the Earth itself.

Here are the various ways that the Tao Fellowship manages water at Mago Retreat:

Water from Tao Fellowship’s four wells is used for drinking, washing, and watering plants (planned for eventual elimination as the gray-water system is expanded).

Water run-off from mountains is captured by Tao Fellowship to fill the man-made lake and the two ponds terraced above it.

Tao Fellowship’s Earth Hall uses a system in which run-off is stored in a septic for watering the plants around it.

Gray-water recycling system takes water from all Tao Fellowship’s Casita Guest Rooms and Welcome House (sinks, bathtubs/showers and toilets), filters it four times, stores it in two 10,000-gallon tanks, and sends it through rubber pipes to water trees and plants.

Tao Fellowship’s gray-water system pumps the filtered water to four small ponds, where 190 plants around them specifically purify the water.

Tao Fellowship’s Casita Guest Room signs urge guests to use towels and linen longer before changing them.

Some of Tao Fellowship’s Casita Guest Room showerheads save water; 100% conversion is planned.

All toilets provided by Tao Fellowship are low-pressure; some have a sign that all paper is to be put only in near-by receptacles. Low-pressure toilets and waterless urinals for new buildings are planned (to be tested and if found effective, installed elsewhere).

The Tao Fellowship plans solar pump for the fountain in the Lake.

Conversion of water in Tao Fellowship’s swimming pool and hot tub to saline (salt water) from chorine is under consideration.

Tao Fellowship’s plastic Mago Retreat-logo water bottles are for sale to enable guests to refill them from large spring-water urns during their visit, to replace the sale of bottled water, planned.