“Quenching Las Vegas’s Thirst” wins Best of the West Award

Posted on | May 14, 2009 | 1 Comment

The Las Vegas Sun series “Quenching Las Vegas’s Thirst,” has won first place for Environmental and Natural Resources Reporting in the 2009 Best of the West Awards. From the announcement:

“Emily Green’s series on water was smartly conceived, deeply reported and compellingly written. Water itself isn’t a new subject; the fact of water scarcity and the political battles it causes have been reported extensively elsewhere. But Green’s series brought the issue home. Her series’ structure — profiling five figures — reinforced a key collective insight of the stories: that the state of water in and around Las Vegas is largely a function of the personalities who, over decades, made water-policy decisions.

Green avoided easy preaching, instead telling the tale of a desert metropolis’ water fight in all its moral complexity, which made for much more interesting reading. And yet she uncovered plenty of disturbing facts — particularly, in the series’ final installment, how the shifting allegiances of scientists played to the advantage of local political figures.

Through it all, Green wove in rich observations, from the physical lay of the land to the politics of the Mormon church, that made the series all the more evocative. She wrote an epic narrative for an epic tale.”

 

Category: Colorado River, Nevada, Water
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Is AB 1881 Too Wet?

Posted on | May 14, 2009 | No Comments

Call Bob Galbreath a drip, and he’ll thank you. The recently retired Outdoor Water Resource Specialist for the City of Santa Monica is Southern California’s pre-eminent expert on drip irrigation. In April 2008, Santa Monica passed its own version of AB 1881, and so I sought out his opinion on what the California Department of Water Resources is proposing as the state-wide irrigation water use standards for 2010.

Not a blogger (or a blowhard) by nature, Galbreath took the plunge and  posted a response about AB 1881. It is a picture of polite skepticism, largely to do with the hopelessness of enforcing the regulations. He also directed me to some key differences between the upcoming statewide model and the one already in force in Santa Monica: The Santa Monica code applies to all landscapes in the city, and restricts the precipitation rate of all irrigation devices to 0.75”/hr, which excludes all commonly used spray heads. I also noticed that the Santa Monica standard limits use of turf to 20% of the landscaped area.

These ordinances are written in irrigation-speak. They’re so impenetrable to laymen that even landscape designers don’t understand them. They hire irrigation experts to do what they want and keep it legal long enough to get a city to sign off on a design. Yet embedded in this plumbing ordinance is law governing the fate of  50% our water supply. We ignore this at our peril. So far, if the Santa Monica / AB 1881 comparison is anything to go by, it looks like California is having a Detroit-like moment, doing less exactly when there is an urgent need for more. We all know what happened to Detroit.

Category: landscape ordinances, Water
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De-sal for San Diego

Posted on | May 13, 2009 | No Comments

San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board grants final approval for Carlsbad Desalination Project, reports Aquafornia.

Category: Desalination, Water
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California AB 1881 in bullet points

Posted on | May 13, 2009 | 5 Comments

UPDATE: 2/19/2010: The new book, Landscape Plants for California Gardens by Cal Poly Pomona professor Bob Perry, gives thorough descriptions for 2,100 landscape plants, their ET budgets, run downs on irrigation system efficiency needed to satisfy those budgets, and then links them all back by plant palette and climate zone groupings — for every climate zone in the state. For information on the major new book for professional landscape designers and architects as well as advanced home gardeners, click here.

UPDATE: 9/22/2009 — California’s Updated Model Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance AB1881 was approved by the Office of Administrative Law on September 10, 2009. For a link to the announcement from the California Department of Water Resources, click here.

For a bullet point guide to it, done with help from Julie Ann Saare-Edmonds of the Landscape Program, Office of Water Use Efficiency, California Department of Water Resources, read on.

*There are relatively few changes from the previous 1990 law, AB 325. AB 1881 is mainly aimed at irrigation technology that will solve common problems such as such as swing joints, so when risers are broken off, they do not gush unnoticed for weeks.

* AB 1881 is mostly aimed at new construction and commercial landscapers.

* AB 1881 only applies to single family residences that are being put in by developers with gardens larger than 2,500 square feet, or to existing single family homes where the landscaped area is more than 5,000 sq feet and undergoing a changeover.
*AB 1881 comes into effect in 2010.
*AB 1881 will require landscapers to use “appropriate technology,” often meaning drip irrigation.
*AB 1881 does not and may not prohibit use of certain plants, such as turf grass.
*AB 1881 does, however, have a budget as to how much water may be applied to those plants and reduces the statewide ET factor from 0.8 to 0.7. If parts of the state have local ordinances operating lower than state law, then the lower ET rate applies there. So the folks in San Diego may not water more and blame Sacramento. The lower limits specified by AB 1881 do not apply to public recreational turf.
*Existing landscapes and irrigation systems will not be forced to retrofit under AB 1881 unless there is a renovation. (Editor’s note: So it will be up to local utility companies and city governments to use rebates to entice  homeowners to upgrade.)
And the best for last….
*Parkways will now have to be irrigated without over-spray. No overhead irrigation is allowed in areas less than 8 feet wide and within 24″ of non-permeable hardscapes.
Pigeons who like puddles in the gutter will object, but “non-permeable hardscapes” mean the street.
Saare-Edmonds kindly sent this picture to show what can be done on parkways without lawn.

img_0701
Category: landscape ordinances
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Drought? What drought? So Cal by watering ordinance

Posted on | May 12, 2009 | 2 Comments

The drought affects all of us, but the reactions to it by cities throughout Southern California could not be more different. A linked guide of how different cities and water districts from San Diego to Ventura are tackling it might exist somewhere else, but now it exists here. So far, kudos to Long Beach for having its head furthest out of the sand. For additions, please blog or e-mail me at emily.green [at] mac.com.

Category: Water, watering ordinances
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