[Water_news] 5. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: AGENCIES, PROGRAMS, PEOPLE - 8/8/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

August 8, 2008

 

5. Agencies, Programs, People –

 

 

Orange County cities review ban on fake grassEmail Picture: Residents seek to reverse policies, saying rules conflict with water district rebates for faux lawns.

Los Angeles Times- 8/8/08

 

SL, Utah counties appeal Nevada's Snake Valley water grab

The Salt Lake Tribune- 8/7/08

 

Water leaders call for unity

The Antelope Valley Press- 8/7/08

 

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Orange County cities review ban on fake grassEmail Picture: Residents seek to reverse policies, saying rules conflict with water district rebates for faux lawns.

Los Angeles Times- 8/8/08

By Paloma Esquivel, Staff Writer

Jean Orban thought she had found a simple solution to her green grass quandary.

The Garden Grove resident considered having a healthy, pretty lawn the mark of being a good neighbor -- plus, residents who let their lawns go brown can be fined by the city. But she wanted to spare her husband the Sunday morning ritual of mowing the lawn, and she thought it was a waste to use hundreds of gallons of water to keep the grass thriving.

 

So she had an artificial lawn installed. The blanket of bright green that stretches from her patio to the street always looks freshly mowed, and her water bill is about the price of a couple of bottles of Dasani.

Alas, Garden Grove doesn't share Orban's affection for her fake lawn. As she soon discovered, the city bans artificial turf. Although the city has yet to take any action against her, others who installed the lawns have been warned that they will be fined.

And that regulation puts the city at odds with the Orange County Municipal Water District, which offers rebates to those who install faux grass.

 

"We want people to change their behavior and use more water-efficient products for landscaping," water district spokeswoman Darcy Burke said of the rebates.

Because of the ban, Orban was denied her $300 rebate.

"I couldn't believe it," she said of Garden Grove's mandate. "Our governor says we need to save water."

Garden Grove is one of five cities in Orange County -- the others are Stanton, La Palma, Orange and Santa Ana -- that for years have barred residents from putting in fake lawns. Although most of the resistance has to do with the look of fake grass -- particularly the older imitations -- there have also been concerns over the level of lead found in some artificial grass. A U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission report focusing on athletic fields concluded, however, that young children are not at risk from exposure to lead in newer artificial turf fields.

Officials with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, a consortium of 26 cities and water districts in the region, said they didn't know of any cities outside Orange County that ban fake lawns.

In Garden Grove, Orban isn't the only one baffled by the ban.

"It never occurred to me that in a state that has an extreme water shortage . . . every city wouldn't do everything they possibly could to save water," said Cookie Smith, a Garden Grove resident who is leading efforts to get the city's ban lifted. She may be gaining some traction: Two months into a state-declared drought, officials in the cities where artificial grass is prohibited are reconsidering the ban.

The yard in front of Smith's pink-trimmed home is a deep, dark mat of luscious green that's not quite the usual color seen during Southern California summers. A year ago, her lawn was named one of the best in the city, she said. She still doesn't know if those who picked it knew it was fake.

Smith likes to describe herself as a child of the 1960s, by which she means she doesn't accept direction without question -- especially when she believes it's a bureaucrat telling her she can't do something because it's policy.

When she was told that Garden Grove didn't allow artificial lawns because they weren't aesthetically pleasing, she prepared to fight.

"We need to do something," she told neighbors. "I'll go ahead and take the state and national level. . . . I know some people on the City Council here."

Smith and others wrote to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for help. They contacted their congressional representatives and their county supervisor. They went to the City Council and the media.

Thanks in large part to their efforts, cities that tightly regulate the aesthetics of neighborhood yards are starting to reconsider whether artificial lawns really are a blight.

In Santa Ana, for instance, the city code says that "turf or acceptable dry climate ground cover is allowed in the frontyard," Planning Manager Karen Haluza said.

For years, that was interpreted to exclude artificial lawns, but city staff is revisiting the regulation.

 

 

"Given today's circumstances, I think we would make the interpretation that 'dry climate ground cover' would include artificial turf," Haluza said.

The city is developing guidelines to regulate the lawns, she said.

In La Palma, city code calls for exactly "70% of the frontyard" to be planted, which effectively prohibits artificial turf in that area, Community Development Director John Di Mario said.

City staff is looking into changes that would allow fake grass, but those adjustments would have to be approved by the City Council. In the meantime, the city is not actively enforcing the ban, he said.

In Orange, officials said the code needs to be amended to specifically address artificial lawns.

"We don't prohibit them, but nothing in the zoning code specifically allows them," said Ed Knight, assistant planning director.

In Garden Grove, an ordinance banning simulated greenery dates from 1992.

At the time, even its biggest supporters said artificial turf tended to resemble neon green motel room carpeting.

The outlandishly faux look in the 1990s drove officials to prohibit the lawns, officials said.

"It wasn't very attractive," city Planning Services Manager Karl Hill said.

Garden Grove's code is exhaustively detailed when it comes to what is and isn't attractive in a lawn. It requires all "unpaved areas" to be planted and specifically prohibits "synthetic ground covers" and even artificial plants.

The city takes aesthetics seriously but water shortages are forcing a new look at mandated greenery, Garden Grove Mayor William Dalton said. The City Council met recently to reconsider the ban but has yet to make a decision. In the meantime, it has asked staff to refrain from enforcing the ban.

"We're in a drought," Dalton said. "Alternatives make a lot of sense.”#

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-fakegrass8-2008aug08,0,3271087.story?page=1

 

 

 

SL, Utah counties appeal Nevada's Snake Valley water grab

The Salt Lake Tribune- 8/7/08

By Patty Henetz

Posted: 1:57 PM- Salt Lake and Utah counties have appealed a Nevada water official's decision to keep them out of a project that would tap groundwater under Snake Valley and the west desert to feed growth in Las Vegas.

Last month, Nevada State Engineer Tracy Taylor denied the two counties' request for "interested party" status, saying the counties should have filed a formal objection in 1989 to the Southern Nevada Water Authority's plans to build a $3.5 billion, 285-mile pipeline project.

 

In a lawsuit filed this week in Nevada state court, the Utah counties allege siphoning water from an aquifer that lies under the two states to feed Las Vegas would cause vegetation to die. If that happens, winds could pick up the destabilized soils and send them in dust-storm clouds to the Wasatch Front , already struggling with particulate pollution.

Twenty years ago, when Las Vegas filed its application in Nevada for the project, little was known about the effects of groundwater pumping on air quality, the petition states.

 

Opponents say that if Las Vegas takes the groundwater, the water table will be out of reach of the roots from plants that fix the soil, the same phenomenon that led to the destruction of the Owens Valley in California when Los Angeles imported water. Dust storms make the Owens Valley one of the nation's most polluted places.
   

All the Utah counties want is to be at the table while Taylor proceeds with the project application, said Utah Association of Counties attorney Mark Ward.

"You cannot adequately assess the environmental soundness of this [water proposal] without taking into account regional air quality," said Ward, who drafted the petition for the Nevada attorney representing the counties.

Taylor also denied requests for interested-party status from three Indian tribal bands and grass-roots groups in a move seen as a new, aggressive tactic to push aside Utah concerns about what could happen to Snake Valley vegetation if the water table drops too low.

In its legal filing with the state engineer, the Southern Nevada Water Authority says the interested-party applicants failed to demonstrate that extreme circumstances prevented them from filing official protests in 1989.

Utah and Nevada are still negotiating on the project, which requires both states' approval. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management also is working on an environmental-impact study.

Taylor has said he would hold a final hearing on the project in late 2009.#

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_10129073

 

 

 

Water leaders call for unity

The Antelope Valley Press- 8/7/08

By Alisha Semchuck, Staff Writer

 

PALMDALE - Perhaps Rodney King said it best: "Can't we all just get along?" The essence of those words was a common theme at a recent water issues workshop in which speakers stressed a need for unity in the community.

 

King, who in the early '90s won millions of dollars in a police brutality lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles, proceeded to get arrested for alleged domestic violence against his girlfriend. Will Antelope Valley water purveyors, farmers, city and county officials and building industry representatives be able to follow the advice they received at the workshop, organized by the Palmdale Water District? Or will they follow the path King reportedly took after he had the millions?

 

For years the various entities have battled over groundwater rights. These days the problem has escalated because of a two-year drought coupled with a judge's decision to slow down water pumps in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to save a protected fish called the Delta smelt.

 

The workshop was meant as a sounding board in which participants could mull over the current water crisis throughout California, including the Antelope Valley, and reach consensus on a fix.

 

Ron Davis, state legislative director for the Association of California Water Agencies, provided an overview of the state's history of water struggles and solutions, beginning before World War I.

 

"Far-sighted, bright leaders in the early 1900s developed regional systems" for water delivery to areas that lacked lakes, rivers and streams.

 

Davis praised William Mulholland, an immigrant who arrived in California in 1877, as one of those pioneers whose vision made it possible for settlers to inhabit a formerly uninhabitable area.

 

Mulholland started out as a ditch digger and eventually became a superintendent for the Los Angeles Water Company. He built the 233-mile Owens Valley Aqueduct to carry water from the Owens Valley across mountains and desert to Los Angeles.

 

Meanwhile, farther north, the Hetch Hetchy Valley water system was developed to supply water to the San Francisco region and bay area. And around 1941, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California created the Colorado River Aqueduct to transport water from the Colorado River to Los Angeles.

 

Searches for water continued by people in areas where water supplies were insufficient. Davis said the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act came into existence as a federal effort to protect rivers identified as having scenic, recreational and wildlife values. The federal government also passed the Endangered Species Act to conserve ecosystems and protect the habitat of endangered species, and the Clean Water Act intended to prevent pollution of surface water.

 

Davis said 20th-century solutions "focused on resource extraction for utilitarian purposes" whereas 21st-century solutions "must invest in sustainability (requiring) comprehensive investment plans."

 

He cited water conservation, recycling and desalination as some possibilities, along with increased surface storage.

 

He told the crowd they "need leadership like (California) had in the early 1900s" in order "to move forward."

 

Laura King Moon, assistant general manager of the State Water Contractors Association in Sacramento, concurred.

 

"There's a lot of politics involved" with water decisions, she said.

 

The impact of a water shortage hasn't yet been felt locally, Moon said, "because water agencies have been digging into their drought reserves."

 

One proposal to bring more surface water to Southern California from the north involves construction of a peripheral canal, a water transfer system that goes around rather than through the delta. But that has long been a controversial concept, one defeated by California voters in 1982.

 

Jerry Johns, deputy director of the state Department of Water Resources, said "We need the water community in one place on this."

 

"The biggest challenge facing water in the Antelope Valley is trust or lack of trust," said Curtis Paxton, assistant general manager of the Palmdale Water District. "People have been fighting over water many years. There's been several efforts over the past 20 years … that fell apart."

 

From PWD's perspective, Paxton said, administrators must strike a "balance between what's best for our district and what's best for the region."

 

Water suppliers and land-use planners have been at odds, with a wide gap separating them, according to Paxton.

 

"The Grand Canyon has existed between the two groups," Paxton said, adding that recent legislation has forced them to work more cohesively.

 

However, the adjudication lawsuit remains.

 

"Adjudication is a knife to our necks," alfalfa rancher Gene Nebeker told the crowd. "During these stressful times, it's important to work together. Collective efforts can best serve the region."

 

In theory, no one disputed that.

 

Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford described the Antelope Valley Integrated Regional Water Management Plan as "a great way to bring everybody together." That integrated plan was a joint effort of 11 Valley agencies to come up with plans that enhance the water supply and apply for a grant funds from the state.

 

Lancaster Vice Mayor Ron Smith agrees with the concept.

 

"We have to collectively speak with one voice, have one public relations campaign. That's going to be the best thing for our citizens," Smith said.

 

In practice, the various factions seem unable to resolve their differences. Not only is the adjudication still in the courts, but at this juncture several attempts at mediation have failed.

 

As for the state grant funds, which could have brought the Valley as much as $25 million, the Valley got zip.

 

Dave Rydman, a civil engineer and water resources manager with Los Angeles County Waterworks Districts, said all the stakeholders in the Valley "need to be serious about looking for opportunities for more money."

 

"We've got to figure a way to regionally cooperate, not just in planning, but in implementation. We won't get money from the state, unless we can show we can work together," Rydman said.#

http://www.avpress.com/n/07/0807_s4.hts

 

 

 

 

 

 

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