Reclaiming Our Water Equilibrium
So how’s your water conservation going? Ours is going great. We have a new gray water system. This is how it works. I take a bath and don’t pull the plug. We scoop the water into a bucket and splash it on our lawn or other garden plants. Same with dish water (bio-degradable soap) and vegetable washing water. Sound too low-tech? Here’s something that’s even more primitive. Instead of using a clothes dryer, we spread our laundry on the lawn. While it’s drying (and saving energy) it’s giving our grass a break from the hot sun.
See, our lawn is not such a waster after all—it’s a solar clothes dryer.
Are you finding your own creative ways to save water?
Even though I love this challenge and it’s the right thing to do, I can’t help but think about all those confident letters from water districts that I read year after year in environmental impact reports. They unfailingly assured decision makers that the districts had plenty of water to serve whichever new development was being proposed. As I do the extra tasks that make our gray water system work I wonder if our efforts are just making it possible for more water district commitments to serve more developments.
There was a time when my friends and I thought it shouldn’t be that way. We were young, just out of graduate school, and had just fallen in love with the wonderful world of Laguna. Condominiums and trailer parks were proposed for the hills behind us. As we got involved in trying to apply environmental criteria to the Orange County world of planning and zoning, we learned about the water board. They controlled the water supply and that was critical to the success or failure of a development proposal.
Yet our local water board was just interested in finding ways to serve whatever level of development was being requested. “It’s not our job to do planning, just to provide service,” they told us. So Lorell Long, Barbara Heiser (now Miller) and I ran for the water board as the “Unincumbents” (Remember the Un-cola?) We thought there was a carrying capacity that could be determined and that the water districts should plan within that, not just extend systems and make commitments to serve upon request.
We lost. Even though we did get over 800 votes, the incumbents got double that. Could it have been Barbara’s and my long hair and Lorell’s Afro wig that turned the voters off? The water district board went on as before.
And so now after years of the water districts’ assuming a best-case scenario and saying “yes,” we’re facing a worst-case situation. It’s clear that all the districts’ commitments exceed the supply. Are they saying “no” yet?
Beginning in the 1960s Irvine planned an extensive reclaimed water system. One of the main reasons was that they are land-locked; they had no outlet to a body of water for their treated sewage. Yet our own local systems lagged behind. “We have the ocean after all. We can just let our effluent flow out there,” they thought. It didn’t seem to be cost-effective to distribute reclaimed water to existing developed areas. The Laguna Beach Water District, serving the city north of Nyes Place, has no reclaimed water distribution system. The treatment plant in Aliso Canyon has been producing up to 1.2 million gallons of reclaimed water every day, but it goes to parks and golf courses in South Laguna and Dana Point.
Now it’s too costly to get that reclaimed water where it’s needed, it seems. But maybe there’s a less expensive way than installing a new pipe under Coast Highway the length of the city. Could we install a reclaimed water pipe from the Aliso Canyon plant through the open space that OCTA just acquired on the north side of the golf course? That would connect to the irrigation system at Moulton Meadows Park. Then on down Balboa to the fire road, then to Top of the World School and Park, down Alta Laguna Boulevard to Alta Laguna Park. From there down Park Avenue to Thurston Middle School, then further down Park to Laguna Beach High School, then to city hall, downtown and the medians. Finally to Main Beach and Heisler Park. We would be watering the bulk of our public landscapes with reclaimed water, saving potable water and our beauty at the same time.
Now that’s a higher tech solution. Meantime I’m enjoying those extra glimpses of the full moon as I haul those buckets.
Landscape architect Ann Christoph is a former council member.
