A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
September 27, 2007
2. Supply
DESALINATION:
Desalination plant needs back-up plan -
Inland lawns are chief drain on water supply - Riverside Press Enterprise
It’s dry all over; Homeowners skip the lawn, going for drought-tolerant plants -
DESALINATION:
Desalination plant needs back-up plan
By Michael Burge, staff writer
Cooling water flowing through the Encina station on
In a July 12 letter to the state Coastal Commission, an official with NRG Energy, which owns Encina, wrote that an average of 122 million gallons a day flowed through the power plant in the first six months of 2007.
Ocean water is used to cool the power plant's five steam generators when they are operating.
The desalination plant would need nearly three times that amount of water – 304 million gallons a day – to meet the terms of its permit from the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board.
The board determined that any flow less than that would create discharges from the desalination plant that would be too salty and could harm ocean life.
“If the power plant does not pump that much (304 million gallons a day), the desalination plant shouldn't be operating,” Michael McCann, assistant executive officer for the water quality-control board, said Tuesday.
The company behind the desalination plant, Poseidon Resources, has been working on a plan that spells out what it would do when Encina is using less water to cool its generators and when the power plant isn't operating at all.
It has proposed restoring 37 acres of wetlands at a cost of $1.84 million to compensate for the impact on fish and marine organisms.
It submitted its plan to the water board this year and is awaiting a hearing.
“I anticipate this will be adopted long before we go into operation, which is when it will be needed,” Poseidon Senior Vice President Peter MacLaggan said yesterday. “We're still three years away from operation, so we've got plenty of time to get this to the point where it needs to be.”
Poseidon's proposed plant would force ocean water through filters and reverse-osmosis membranes to produce drinking water.
The plant would draw 100 million gallons a day from the stream of water the power station uses to cool its generators.
Poseidon would purify 50 million gallons a day and return the other 50 million gallons to the ocean. The rejected water would return to the ocean twice as salty as when it came out.
Since Poseidon began studying the process of marrying its operation to the power station's cooling stream of ocean water, Encina's energy production has dropped precipitously.
In 2005 it generated 164,000 megawatts per month. The plant's average monthly output for the first six months of this year was 22,660 megawatts.
Similarly, the volume of cooling water cycling through the plant has dropped – from 537 million gallons a day in 2005 to 456 million gallons in 2004 and 122 million gallons a day for the first half of this year.
“The Encina plant has been more idle in recent times relative to past years, and indeed has not operated for relatively long periods of time,” wrote Marc A. Kodis, regional engineering manager for NRG Energy, to the California Coastal Commission on July 12.
NRG Energy also plans to replace the three oldest steam generators with an air-cooled plant, which would reduce the need for ocean water to cool the turbines. NRG has said that change will take place by 2011 if it's approved by the California Energy Commission.
MacLaggan said the regional board anticipated that the power station would eventually need less water, so Poseidon was required to develop a plan for that event.
He said the plan attempts to keeping salinity levels low while minimizing the number of fish and other marine organisms killed.
“There's a balancing act between salinity of the discharge and quantity of water going through the intake,” MacLaggan said.
He said the company is conducting tests to gauge whether marine life can tolerate salt concentrations higher than permitted.
If approved, Poseidon's $300 million facility would be the largest ocean-water desalination plant in
The company has agreements with seven water districts –
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070927/news_1mi27desal.html
Inland lawns are chief drain on water supply
Riverside Press
By Jennifer Bowles, staff writer
Jennifer Francis was stunned to get a letter from her homeowners association warning she'd be fined $50 if she didn't water a patch of browning grass by her driveway.
"We've had no rain. How ridiculous is it that they want us to waste water," said the nurse who lives in the Jurupa area west of
As the state faces a water crisis, pleas for conservation are no longer focusing on low-flush toilets and low-flow showers, but on the outdoors where 60 percent to 80 percent of a home's total water goes to keeping landscaping green.
But the effort to get residents to voluntarily ease off the hose like Francis did may not be an easy task.
A recent statewide survey found that just more than half of the residents polled had no idea how much water they sprinkle on their lawn and gardens. Of those who ventured a guess, 68 percent thought they use less than 50 gallons a day, when the statewide average is 185 gallons, according to the survey conducted by the Water Resources Institute and the
The survey, the first statewide poll of its kind looking at attitudes toward water and lawns, was co-sponsored by the California Urban Water Conservation Council. The nonprofit council made up of utilities and environmental groups was charged in 2004 with creating a statewide task force to explore ways to reduce water use on landscapes.
Jennifer Francis received a letter from the homeowners association warning she faced a fine if she didn't water a section of browning grass by her driveway. She is looking into low-water-use plants to put in its place. At right is her son, Ben, 5.
Chris Brown, the council's executive director, said the timing of the survey couldn't be better.
Southern California water sources are shrinking: The Colorado River is gripped by an eight-year drought; the water content of the snowpack in the
Armed with the survey's findings, the conservation council's members will craft messages to raise awareness of how much water people use outdoors -- a concept that may take some time to get, Brown said.
But such messages, he said, could play off the competitive edge neighbors sometimes have with each other.
"When you're keeping up with the Joneses in
The Pretty Factor
Those surveyed said they care most about the appearance of their lawns and gardens, followed by ease of care and a place for children and pets to play. Because of that, Brown said the message has to get out that drought-resistant plants, shrubs and ground cover use less water, can look great and are easier to care for than mowing a lawn each week.
Those messages might end up being carried by the youngest of Californians. As some children persuaded their parents to recycle, the same may go with water conservation and drought-adapted plants, said Susan Lien Longville, director of the Water Resources Institute.
People in the survey said they would listen most to gardeners, a university expert and their children when it comes to messages of water conservation, and were less likely to pay attention to an actor, politician or religious leader.
To that end, Longville said, Chino-based Inland Empire Utilities Agency and the water institute will launch a pilot project next spring in which schoolchildren will knock on doors and hand out brochures selling drought-resistant plants instead of candies or gift-wrapping as fundraisers.
Rebate and Demonstrate
Longville said the survey found that people would also respond to rebates for weather-sensitive sprinklers that use less water or a so-called "cash for grass" program like the one that has been in place in the
In fact, 81 percent of respondents said a program that offered cash for reducing lawn size and replacing it with more water-efficient plants would work or might work.
Riverside County Supervisor Marion Ashley has said that could be the next step. The county passed an ordinance last year requiring new homes to have water-efficient landscapes by 2010.
Although 35 percent of those who said they would not buy water-efficient plants cited appearance as the most important reason for their reluctance, 87 percent said they would be or might be motivated to change their landscape if they saw the plants laid out in a demonstration garden.
"A lot of people think drought-tolerant plants are gray, scrubby dry things and cactus, and they certainly don't have to be.
There's thousands of plants, and if you plant it right, you can have color all year long," said Pam Pavela, a conservation specialist for Western Municipal Water District.
The district, which mostly imports Northern California water to a large area of western
The district, like others in the region, also holds classes for people within the service area to learn how to choose the right plants and irrigate them properly, Pavela said.
Managed Property
About 90 percent of survey respondents, who represented homeowners associations, property managers and maintenance contractors, said that grass was either very important or somewhat important to their landscape.
Francis received the warning because in a homeowners association, "part of the responsibility of the homeowner is to maintain the aesthetics of their unit, which includes their lawn and lawn care," said Benjamin Baldassarre, office manager of Guardian Preferred Properties in
Despite the drought, he said, residents should still use enough water to keep the lawn alive.
One unnamed property manager, who responded to the survey, said competition dictates water usage, especially in housing developments.
"The value of the homes in the community compared to the competition will always outweigh the social consciousness of using plants and irrigation controllers that save water," the property manager said.
Those who manage large tracts of public property such as parks and schools report that the low cost of water actually discourages conservation. Of property managers surveyed, 77 percent said they would or might respond to low-maintenance messages or environmental messages that stress that excessive runoff pollutes rivers, streams and oceans.
Overall, Longville said, people appear to want to do the right thing when it comes to conserving water. But it was very clear that the appearance of their yards was a big issue.
"That was a strong message," she said. #
http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_R_landscaping27.6b4189.html
It’s dry all over; Homeowners skip the lawn, going for drought-tolerant plants
By Bettijane Levine, staff writer
AT first glance, the two homes have nothing in common. One's an urban update of a rustic log cabin. The other, a 1920s Mediterranean casa. What links them is their imaginative drought-resistant gardens -- drastic departures from the lush carpets of grass that used to surround each one and that still front almost all the other houses in their neighborhoods.
Neither of the homeowners set out to be environmentally up-to-date. Water conservation was not a top priority or a major part of their original plans.
In one case, the existing lawn and many flowers around the rustic house had died. The couple, who'd just bought the place, wanted to revitalize the garden, add new plants and pizazz. They had no idea what kind of plants.
The other homeowners' problem was more complex. They too had just bought their home, a rambling
In both cases, drought-tolerant plants became part of the solution -- although in entirely different ways. Despite being dissimilar in architectural and garden styles, the homes prove just how versatile these plants can be. Once used mostly as stylistic botanical props where something unusual was called for, they are becoming part of the garden vernacular, equipped to live on low doses of moisture and survive bouts of drought.
WHEN Susan Avallone and her husband, Carr D'Angelo bought their Sherman Oaks spread four years ago, neighbors had nicknamed it the Ponderosa. The brown wood house, perched on a corner, was highly visible -- its front and side exposed to the streets. A redwood rail fence corralled the vast, flat, park-like swath of manicured grass that encircled the place.
When the new owners temporarily turned off their sprinklers while re-staining the exterior, the grass quickly turned as brown as the house. And Renee Gunter, who'd been hired to do a bit of landscaping, seized the moment: "Want to do something radical? Be ecologically responsible? Be a pioneer in your neighborhood? Want to go grassless?"
Not an option, retorted Avallone, who grew up in rural
After reflection, it turned out that Avallone, a librarian turned screenwriter, and her film producer husband D'Angelo ("Hot Chick," "The Animal") didn't really want to have to do much. Why squander water and money on a boring lawn suitable for croquet when what they really wanted was water conservation, easy maintenance, a bit more privacy and some aesthetic inspiration?
Gunter, owner of Urbanscapes in
She planted the perimeter with large drought-resistant species -- a huge Agave neglecta flanked by two Acacia baileyana rise from a berm on the corner -- making the house almost invisible from certain perspectives. What the couple received in trade for their pleasant but useless lawn is an entire environment -- a kind of private park in which they can wander and which delights their senses.
The new wraparound garden is a sanctuary for a stunning array of drought-resistant grasses, shrubs, ground covers and succulents of many shapes, sizes and colors. Winding right through it is what Gunter calls a "dry riverbed," a broad, meandering path of smooth gravel that invites people to wander through and enjoy the unusual plantings.
The garden now seems welcoming from the street -- so much so that parents bring their children to wander the pebbly path and study the flora. Yet it also seems protected by the plantings, which provide a kind of visual fence.
Strolling the path in bare feet is a treat, Avallone says, and her yen for grass has been sated by something she likes better than green: Big clumps of Japanese blood grass (Imperata cylindrica), which are tipped with her favorite color, red.
"Not all our neighbors could appreciate the yard right away. It took time for things to fill in and bloom," Avallone says. But acceptance is dawning, she says. One couple returned repeatedly to stroll the path with their baby. Avallone introduced herself, and they asked her lots of questions. She passed their house recently and says she realized "they were actually inspired by what we've done. They've changed their own front lawn to a dry scape, with lovely lavender, rosemary and succulents -- and it looks great."
Afew miles east, in Studio City, Gail Silverton lives with her new husband, Joel Gutman, in a house she bought four years ago. The house itself was great, but the outdoor space in front was neither useful nor usable. "It was a white
She saw possibilities for what would become a mini-estate. By building a wall across the front, removing the concrete and reconfiguring the space, she could create a lush and livable garden that could double as a private outdoor room.
Gunter designed a 5-foot-high wall across the front of the property to connect with an existing side fence, so the area would be private. The front wall is made of stucco,
The path from gate to front door is now flagstone, with fragrant thyme plumped among the stones.
Silverton wanted to retain a patch of front lawn for her two Yorkies to play on, and Gunter surrounded that with lush plantings of herbs, vegetables and varieties of drought-resistant grasses, ground covers, aloes and agave.
She planted lambs ears (Stachys lamiaceae) and santolina (Asteraceae compositae) along with the brilliant orange, low-growing succulent Sedum nussbaumerianum -- all mixed in with Evelyn roses, Russian sage, cabbages, celery, artichokes, tomatoes and a variety of herbs.
Silverton, who owns a preschool and a gelato bar in the neighborhood, says she's sampled all the edibles in her yard, and they're delicious. "We can't eat the cabbages, however. They're too wormy."
The garden brings delight on a daily basis, she says. "We walk out here and suddenly see something new that's popped up that we didn't even realize was growing. It's a great adventure." It's also a great addition of useful private space meant for fun and relaxation in this house that once had nothing in front except a patch of grass. #
http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/home/la-hm-drought27sep27,1,3390996.story
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