Not quite right as rainwater by Eric Sorensen | © Washington
State University Jen McIntyre is something of a rainwater
connoisseur, but you wouldn’t want to drink from her collection.
Her preferred source is a drainpipe that runs from State Route
520 to a parking lot in Seattle’s Montlake neighborhood. Tens of
thousands of cars and scores of buses pass by every day,
dropping bits of tire rubber, brake dust, exhaust, and the
occasional cigarette butt. In winter, passing showers might
rinse off the road surface every few days or hours. In summer, a
month might go by between rains, giving McIntyre a particularly
potent stormwater cocktail, like the one she harvested last
August. Freshly bottled, it’s brown and nearly opaque. If she
freezes and thaws it, it clears up, with little pieces settling
out. “These are maybe bits of leaves, bits of rubber,” she says
while working one rainy afternoon with an October 20, 2011,
vintage. “Sometimes there’s sand, silt, and mud. Sometimes
there’s bugs, little baby spiders.” Bu