I have been a proponent of water conservation for 25 years and am more active than ever in promoting the proper use of irrigation in our community. I have found that most people are conscious of the need to be conservative water users, but there really is no incentive for many others not to save water. In these cases, stricter restrictions may be necessary. However, those of us that have been saving water for years, should not be penalized for not being able to save more than is reasonable. The City of Los Angeles is proposing a law that would require us to save more water when it is raining than nature itself can.
Los Angeles may require storm water recapture beginning in 2011, but the proposed law may have gone to the extreme.
The fairly new approach to managing storm water and urban runoff is designed to mitigate the negative effects of urbanization by controlling runoff at its source, which is parking lots, rooftops, driveways and streets, with small, cost-effective natural systems instead of treatment facilities. These “natural” systems would be rain gardens for small parcels and holding ponds for larger areas. But “larger” areas that have no land for holding ponds will have to install not so natural underground holding and or dispersement systems. And these systems are not small or cost effective.
The proposed law would require new homes, larger developments and some redevelopments in Los Angeles to capture and reuse runoff generated in rainstorms. Reducing this runoff improves water quality and recharges groundwater, which is a great thing.
The proposed ordinance approved in January by the Department of Public Works could go into effect by 2011 and would require such projects to capture, reuse or infiltrate 100 percent of runoff generated in a 3/4 -inch rainstorm or to pay a storm water pollution mitigation fee that would help fund off-site, low-impact public developments.
With a project I am consulting on right now, the developer will be installing a system sized to his water needs. 100% of the water necessary to irrigate his landscape during the dry season will be captured and held for use from the rainfall captured over the course of the entire winter season. It is not realistically possible, either physically or financially to catch more than this on the available land, nor is there a reason to do so.
I do not understand how we should be forced to capture the 3/4 inch rainfall amount to be mitigated if it is more than nature itself can save. Runoff in our local foothills can occur with as little as 1/4 inch of rain. And what do you do if you have a 3/4 inch rain event followed closely by a second event? It is unreasonable to have to trap 1-1 1/2 inches of water under ground until it can infiltrate into the ground or be used.
LA Board of Public Works Commissioner Paula Daniels, who drafted the ordinance last July, said the new requirements would prevent 104 million gallons of polluted urban runoff from ending up in the ocean. Under the ordinance, builders would be required to use rainwater storage tanks, permeable pavement, infiltration swales or curb bump-outs to manage the water where it falls. Builders unable to manage 100 percent of a project’s runoff on site would be required to pay a penalty of $13 a gallon of runoff not handled there—a requirement the Building Industry Assn. has been fighting.
Some building projects, such as those in downtown L.A. or areas where the soil is high in clay, would have difficulty with the 100 percent retention rule and that the $13-a-gallon mitigation fee is too high. A one-acre building on ground where runoff could not be managed on site, Schroeder said, could pay a fee as high as $238,000.
Realistically, storing water for our use during the dry season, installing rain gardens to hold water so that it can infiltrate into the ground naturally and being conservative with the use of our water is what we should be doing now. Being penalized for mother nature raining ¾ inch at a time is unrealistic.