Makeover city
SOME acronyms exist merely to make us sound drunk. The city of Long Beach’s BLBL is one. But what the Beautiful Long Beach Landscapes program lacks in mellifluousness, it makes up for in success. BLBL is a key part of a drive that has cut Long Beach water use by 16.5% since fall 2007.
To read today’s Dry Garden column on Long Beach’s raffle for makeovers in the newly redesigned Los Angeles Times online edition, click on I dig it. Wow, I mean, talk about makeovers!…
Pollinate me
California fuchsia photographed on the Bear Creek Trail in the Angeles National Forest. Photo: Ann Berkley. Click on the trumpet flower to be taken to the US Forest Service "Celebrating Wildflowers" page.
SOMEHOW during the hot, long days of summer, our native flora punctuates the dry season with flashes of color. Horticulturists speculate that the reason is sex …
Click here for the latest Los Angeles Times Dry Garden column on late summer bloomers, the queen of which is indisputably the California fuchsia, pictured left.…
Watering like it was 1945
SINCE introducing mandatory conservation in September 2007, Long Beach water consumption now runs 16.5% below the historical average, reported the Long Beach Board of Water Commissioners today.
For the full report from Aquaformia, click here.
According to Matthew Veeh, a Special Projects Officer with the city, Long Beach water use has dropped to 105 gallons per person per day, the lowest it’s been since 1945.
By comparison, the Los Angeles County average, according to a fantastically nifty Aguanomics map, was 185 gallons per person per day when the map was produced in November 2008. That, too, is dropping since the City of Los Angeles introduced mandatory conservation in June 2009.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power recently reported a 16.8% drop among single family homes in June, a 32-year low. But, from the looks of it, Long Beach is still way ahead of LA both in …
Spin on sprinklers
FROM the Water Education Foundation news service Aquafornia this Los Angeles Department of Water and Power press release: Water demand in the City of Los Angeles is at a 32-year low for the month of June as the result of conservation measures introduced last month. LADWP is pleased. We should be too.
Last week, the LADWP press office confirmed to this blog that since it introduced a cash-for-grass program on June 2, it has had 60 successful applications. I don’t know if LADWP is pleased. We shouldn’t be. In a city with more than half a million privately owned homes, this is the lamest number to be found outside of my bank account.
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Saved by drip?
A REPORT this week from the Pacific Institute argues that using pricing to encourage California farmers to switch from flood irrigation to sprinklers or drip could conserve 5.6 million acre-feet of water a year. According to the report’s co-author Peter Gleick, this is the equivalent to:…
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