Water Wise

Claremont City Manager Jeff Parker's weekly report last Thursday led with a blurb about a turf buyback program offering $3 for every square-foot of yard grass homeowners replace with drought-tolerant landscaping:

TURF BUYBACK PROGRAM NOW AVAILABLE IN CLAREMONT!

Golden State Water Company and Three Valleys Municipal Water District have teamed up to offer cash rebates to Claremont homeowners that remove turf and replace it with water-wise landscaping. The Residential Turf Removal Program rebates $3.00 per square foot for turf removed up to a maximum of $3,000 per residence. Details of the program and an application to participate can be found at:

http://www.socalwatersmart.com/images/PDFs/mwd_rebate_form_turf_removal.pdf .

The City is excited about this program because it should help the community meet its goal of reducing potable water consumed community-wide by 20% by 2012. City Council members have been pushing for a turf buyback program, noting that 70% of water used in Claremont is for outdoor uses and that turf is almost always the most water intensive plant in our yards.

It's great to see the City leading the way when it comes to conservation issues, especially with sustainability having become a civic buzzword. That the City has encouraging residents to be aware of these sorts of environmental issues adds to City Hall's embarrassment over things like leaving the lights burning over unused sports fields.

Claremont's municipal carbon footprint grew a little larger now that it's soccer fields at Padua Park are on line. A reader wrote to say someone forgot to switch off the field lights there last week:

DATE: Sat, September 4, 2010 7:02:01 AM
TO: Claremont Insider
SUBJECT: Re: Claremont Insider

Oh yeah, Friday night you could see the Padua park lights from space. You know the area in north claremont that isn't supposed to have any street lights. They wanted to keep that rural feeling. That is until "they" had yet another plan, uh huh I feel like I'm in the boonies...

We heard separately from another reader that the Padua soccer lights were burning last Thursday night with no one on the fields. How fitting that the project that pushed the city budget millions of dollars into the red, a project touted for its "sustainability," continues to run up a bill for wasted dollars.

We were thinking about those field lights when it occurred to us that the City has added over three acres of turf at Padua Park at precisely the same time they are asking residents to remove the grass in their yards. As City Manager Parker wrote, "City Council members have been pushing for a turf buyback program, noting that 70% of water used in Claremont is for outdoor uses, and turf is almost always the most water intensive plant in our yards."

At around three acres (a conservative estimate), the fields at Padua Park amount to enough grass for 130 homes under the turf buyback program City Manager Parker touted.

The City would argue that the turf planted in Padua Park is a drought-resistant, "water-wise" type, which may be perfectly true. However, several our readers have commented that ever since the park opened, the park's water usage has appeared pretty wasteful, including a substantial leak along one side of the westernmost soccer field. Even on the hottest of days, standing water apparently pooled in the turf there.

We were curious and, nearly five months after the park's opening, we finally dispatched someone to take a look at the situation. There wasn't any standing water, but we did notice some repair work was underway in the spot where the months-old leak was supposed to have been:

Click on Image to Enlarge

Though the turf in problem area had been removed, it looked like the leak hadn't been fixed yet:



Looking around the park, we found other evidence of the City's water management prowess:

Watering Dirt

La Cienega

A River Runs Through It

Mighty Dry Oak

More Water Rationing News

Like the rest of us, you probably received a notice in the mail today from Golden State Water Company regarding a public meeting next Wednesday, June 17, at 6:30pm. The meeting will allow the water company to explain their proposed mandatory water rationing plan.

You may want to pay attention because there are fines of $50 to $300 that can be imposed for violations, depending on which of the seven stages of water rationing we happen to be at. The conditions listed seem to track the city's proposed water conservation ordinance.

The City of Claremont's website carried this notice, along with a link to the text of the mailing:

Public Meeting on Staged Mandatory Water Rationing

Golden State Water Company (GSWC) filed Advice Letter 1332-W requesting authority from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to institute a staged mandatory rationing plan (Plan). The proposed Plan would only go into effect when specific criteria, detailed in the Plan, are met. A Public meeting will be held on June 17, 2009 at Double Tree Hotel, Sequoia Room, 555 W. Foothill Boulevard, Claremont, CA, to explain the rate process and to receive public input.

GSWC customers who would like to provide any other information or comments regarding this requested increase, should write to the CPUC at the address below.

Written public comment by GSWC customers is very much desired by the CPUC and may be sent to the CPUC's Water Division at 505 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102, 3rd Floor, Room 3102, or e-mailed to regulatoryaffairs@gswater.com. Please refer to Golden State Water Company's Advice Letter No. 1332-W in any communications.

View GSWC Manadatory Conservation Notice (Adobe Acrobat, 35KB)

The public is also invited to send written comments to the California Public Utilities Commission. The water company mailing gave this information:

Written public comment by GSWC customers is very much desired by the CPUC and may be sent to the CPUC's Water Division at 505 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102, 3rd Floor, Room 3102. Please refer to Golden State Water Company's Advice Letter No. 1332-W in any communications.

GOLDEN STATE WATER CO. MEETING
Wednesday, June 17, 6:30pm
Double Tree Hotel
555 W. Foohill Blvd.
Claremont, CA 91711

Early Spring

The year has cast its cloak away
That was of driving rains and snows,
And now in flowered arras goes,
And wears the clear sun's glossy ray.

No bird or beast but seems to say
In cries or chipper tremolos:
The year has cast its cloak away
That was of driving rains and snows.

From Rondeau
- Charles d'Orleans
Translated by Richard Wilbur

It's hard to believe just a few short weeks ago we had freezing temperatures, pouring rains, and snow down to the top of Potato Mountain. All that's a dim memory now. The sun may still has three more weeks before it reaches the halfway point in its northward crawl, but it sure felt a lot like spring these last few days.

This past weekend we had glorious weather, and it was great to get out and enjoy the warm sunshine before we cool off again in the coming days. The weather reports say we may get a little spritz of rain, though not nearly enough to break the drought we're in, which is why Governor Schwarzenegger last week declared a drought emergency for California. Water rationing for farms and cities appears to be on the way, and a long, dry fire season awaits. But for now, the hills are still green, and the frogs are croaking away in great choruses if you're up for an evening hike.

Might as well celebrate the good weather while it's here.

All Wet - For Now

We didn't write about the last round of storms that blew through the area earlier this week, but a reader caught the rainfall numbers recorded at the automated weather station at L.A. County Fire Station 62 on Mills Ave. just south of Mt. Baldy Rd.

The reader pegged the rainfall between last Thursday and 9pm Monday evening at nearly five inches:

DATE: Monday, February 9, 2009 9:02 PM
SUBJECT: Rainfall
TO: Claremont Buzz

Hi Buzz -

I think I'm recalling this correctly, but I'm not sure. Last Thursday just before the storms, the Claremont weather station that you've publicized before had our rain total at 6.68 inches (might have been 6.86). Now (Mon 9pm) under a clear sky it's at 11.79. That's a lot of good moisture.

And there's more to come beginning Friday and Saturday from what the forecasters are telling us.

The latest storms brought much more than rain to our area. The snow levels were down quite low, and, after the clouds lifted late Monday afternoon, Mt. Baldy and the surrounding mountains were fully clad in white. The front page of Tuesday's Los Angeles Times had a stunning photo by Allen J. Schaben shot from Huntington Harbour looking north to the San Gabriel Mountains.

We couldn't find the photo posted on the Times website, but here's a shot of the front page:

Click to Enlarge

Even with all the rain, water experts are saying that Northern California precipitation is still woefully below normal for this time of year. The Aquafornia blog, which covers California water issues, explained why Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called for water rationing on Monday despite the recent heavy rains:

23% of Los Angeles’ water comes from Owens Valley, and 67% comes from Metropolitan, according to the Los Angeles Times article. Metropolitan’s water supplies include groundwater, Colorado River Aqueduct, and the State Water Project. Metropolitan has rights to 47% (2 MAF [million acre-feet]) of water from the State Water Project and 1.2 MAF of Colorado River water, plus groundwater.

The good news is that this year, the snowpack is looking good for the Colorado River basin. The okay news is that the Eastern Sierra and the Owens Valley are classified as moderate drought to abnormally dry. But the bad news is that Northern California, the source for the State Water Project, is considered in “extreme drought”.

So, although Southern California is getting plenty of precipitation, it doesn’t do a lot for the water supply as most of it flows right out to the ocean. Northern California’s precipitation is still below normal, at least according to this drought monitor. It’s from last Tuesday, so it doesn’t include the recent storms which have brought some rain and snow to Northern California. There might be some improvement in the next one.

The State of California's Department of Water Resources has a website with all sorts of drought information, including a graphic, current as of February 1st, showing the water levels at the state's main reservoirs:

Click to Enlarge

Drying Out

Get ready for more dry years, reports the Daily Bulletin. According to an article by Wesley G. Hughes, NASA oceanographer Bill Patzert believes we are in a nine-year long drought and the next nine don't look a whole lot better.

Paztert, who works at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, has appeared frequently as an El Niño/La Niña expert on local and national news programs. He says the nine-year long dry spell is the result of something he calls the Pacific Decadal Oscillation:

Patzert says the last nine years are consecutively the nine driest in a century, and that can be traced to the oscillation.

"We haven't had a big El Niño in a decade," he said, and it is having a profound effect on the water we depend on from the Colorado River and that is delivered to Diamond Valley Lake near Hemet.

He predicted temperatures will continue to rise in the region. Even in cooler years such as the one we are in now, temperatures will spike for a few days, resulting in dangerous triple-digit temperatures and heavy water use.

Patzert says a crisis is looming, and the only solution is for all of us to reduce water consumption by 50 percent, something he calls doable....

* * *

In other water related news, we came across a very informative blog called Aquafornia, which deals with Southern California water issues. One link to an article in the Stockton Record about so-called "megadroughts" was particularly alarming.

According to the Record's piece, the 20th Century may have actually been an anomaly in terms of precipitation in California and appears to represent the wettest century in the past 4,000. And between 900-1500AD there were two megadroughts, one of about 140 years and one that lasted over 200 years.

So, many of the water supply assumptions urban planners and developers had when Southern California was assuming its amorphous, sprawling shape may have been utterly wrong.