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California Friendly™ is the umbrella term created by Metropolitan for conservation programs that touch all aspects of life in Southern California —including business, industry, homebuilders and homeowners. It is a new name for an old idea, and a branding of an ideology that has been germinating for more than a decade.
The new water-wise ethic, said Karl Kurka, assistant director of California Urban Water Conservation Council, has “trickled down to consumers who see conservation doesn’t mean sacrifice in comfort, it just means using the resource more efficiently.”
Kurka cited the example of front-loading, high-efficiency washers.
“People are paying a premium for those devices because they save on energy and water,” Kurka said, “but I think people are getting them because they perform better.”
From shower heads to satellite-controlled sprinklers
For years, conservation was done primarily inside people’s residences. Now the focus takes place outdoors and within new developments, said Steve Arakawa, manager of Metropolitan’s water resources group.
“We want to make sure high-efficiency features are built-in at the beginning, and the commercial and industrial sector is looking for more ways to conserve,” Arakawa said.
The first round of conservation efforts began in earnest in Southern California during the drought that lasted from 1987 to 1992. It was a low-tech era when water districts handed out low-flow showerheads and low-flush toilets, and asked people to cut back or stop watering their lawns. Those early methods can seem quaint now, especially given today’s high-technology solutions like satellite-controlled water sprinklers, waterless urinals, dual-flush toilets and high-efficiency washing machines.
Conservation is no longer an issue “owned” by the tree-hugger set.
More than three years ago, Metropolitan launched the campaign that would become the California Friendly brand, in a strategic effort to make consumers fall in love with conservation through new outdoor ideas and products that embrace the Southern California climate and work within it to create attractive, realistic landscapes.
Instead of automatic sprinklers, often set by gardeners with little horticultural training, we now have high-tech irrigation controllers tied to satellites that determine how much water the individual landscape needs by real-time climate data. In place of annual battles with the summer heat to keep our lawns fecund, the California Friendly model offered examples of warm-weather turf that wouldn’t need as much water, and enticed consumers to try matilija poppies, mimulus, salvias and other floral stunners that thrive in warm, arid climates.
“(Now) that message is starting to mature and people are paying attention to it,” said Brian Thomas, Metropolitan’s chief financial officer.
It was a message people heard—all across the state.
Indeed, increased consumer interest in water-saving landscapes was the impetus for Oakland-based East Bay Municipal Utility District to produce “Plants and Landscapes for Summer Dry Climates,” a book detailing native and drought-tolerant gardens and explaining how to incorporate them into individual landscapes. Starting about three years ago, native plant societies began experiencing a huge growth in sales—mostly from homeowners looking for less thirsty plants.
“Conservation is a good business move for the water industry in California and the West,” Thomas said.
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| Photo by Sally Aristei - Shea Homes California Friendly Development |
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The state’s official water plan calls urban water conservation the single largest “new” source of water available and a 2005 study by the Pacific Institute estimated that water use efficiencies—the preferred term for conservation and other strategic water efficient measures—could net up to 4 million acre-feet of water annually.
Where it was once limited to those interested in saving water or money, the ultra-low-flow toilet is now the only kind of toilet you can buy in California; a 1992 law requires that all new toilets use 1.6 gallons of water or less. Landscape and building ordinances in most cities require water-efficient appliances and place limits on the amount of turf and the types of irrigation systems that can be installed in new homes and businesses.
“In the old days, not so long ago really, when we had to meet new (water) demand, we’d reroute a river, build wells, pump more water,” Thomas said. “Things change slowly in our business but there’s a realization that there is a limited supply.”
Metropolitan conducted an analysis in 1996 to determine the roles conservation and water recycling would play in the district’s resource planning blueprint for water supply reliability. The study found that the two strategies not only reduce the cost of supplying water to MWD customers, but also reduced rates because they prevented the need for large infrastructure projects where the costs would be borne by ratepayers.
“In most business, if you decrease demand, you increase costs. But we found that we would be no worse off and many (member agencies) would be better off (with conservation),” Thomas said.
Laws continue evolving
For years, Southern Californians were accused of “stealing” the North’s water in order to fill swimming pools. The animosity ran both ways as Southern Californians, who embraced conservation measures during the 1988-1992 drought, were rankled to learn that single-family homes in the Central Valley were not charged for water usage. Indeed, some homes didn’t even have water meters. Eventually, a San Diego lawmaker pushed through a water meter bill. AB 2572, which took effect in 2005, affected about 100,000 Sacramento city households and a similar number in Fresno. All customers, including single-family residents, are now required to have a meter and be billed a metered rate by 2025.
And attitudes about Southern California’s water use are changing, too. “Folks in Northern California have no idea how effective and how far ahead Southern California is in terms of managing water,” said David Nesmith, the Oakland-based moderator for the California Environmental Caucus, during a Jan. 24 hearing about water use south of the Bay-Delta.
Conservation and new homes
Changing consumer attitudes about water conservation becomes easier if the private sector is on board. One industry that has the potential to make a big impact is homebuilders, who can design water-saving features into new homes from the start. It’s now a marketing edge to sell a home with features such as water-efficient appliances and low-water landscapes.
As the local and state conservation initiatives have taken root, homebuilders have taken notice and it is altering the very look of Southern California homes, inside and out.
“Before, when we considered water-saving landscapes, the product wasn’t right and consumers didn’t like it,” said Nora Jaeschke, of NN Jaeschke Inc., a San Diego-based property services company. “Now what is being presented is extremely attractive and people like it.
“The consumer drives the builder, and consumers are becoming more interested in the California Friendly concept,” she said.
Under one incentive program, Metropolitan and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation offer homebuilders up to $2,500 per model home to cover the incremental cost of upgrading to dual-flush toilets, high-efficiency clothes washers, smart and sustainable landscaping using beautiful and less-than-thirsty plants, and irrigation systems including smart timers and precision sprinkler heads.
The program was a natural for the region, officials said.
“We’re at the bottom of the pipeline, in a semi-arid state,” explained Cindy Hansen, senior water resource specialist for the San Diego County Water Authority, one of Metropolitan’s member agencies. “We like to do what we can to make our supply last.”
Metropolitan’s rebate program expands on the Water Authority’s indoor-water conserving program that, since 1991, has installed more than 500,000 ultra-low-flush toilets, saving an estimated 160,000 acre-feet of water.
“This is the next frontier,” Hansen said. “With the amount of building going on in Southern California, (encouraging conservation in new construction) is a prime opportunity, because the retrofit opportunities are diminishing.”
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Photo by Sally Aristei - Shea Homes California Friendly Development |
Several builders have already embraced the concept, including Pardee Construction, Shea, Centex, KBHomes, K. Hovnanian and Barrett American. In fast-growing Riverside County, every KBHome comes standard with a California Friendly front yard.
“As a company we think it’s the right thing to do because one of the biggest issues in the state is the water supply,” said Steve Ruffner, president of the Riverside Division of KBHome. “We gravitated towards it and it offers something tangible to buyers—a water saving package that we believe will lead to more buyers in the long run, especially after they get their water bills.”
One hurdle the program faced, with developers and homebuyers alike, is an association of water savings with unattractive landscapes. But wider availability of California native and other water-conserving plants that can create lush, colorful traditional looking gardens that use a fraction of the water, is putting those arguments to rest. Still, it can be a hard sell to people more accustomed to petunias and begonias than poppies and salvias.
Chris Greenwood, public relations director for Armstrong Garden Centers, thinks that the only way California gardeners will adopt the more rustic look of native plants is for them to see them used effectively in public landscapes, such as freeway embankments and median strips.
“When people driving along the road see lovely ceanothus or flannel bushes in full bloom and say, ‘This is lovely,’ is when people will be willing to change their own gardens,” Greenwood said. “Now, it’s more a matter of (public officials saying) ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’”
Ultimately, officials say, water conservation will continue to grow as more people see its environmental and financial benefits and as technology continues to make it easier.
“It’s just like with energy; a lot of energy conservation began in the ’70s with the energy crisis,” said Metropolitan’s Arakawa. “A lot of water conservation did, too, but it was less technical and more behavioral. Then came the ’87-’92 drought.
“That was a milestone,” Arakawa said. “It got the water agencies to take conservation more seriously. Where we are headed today is building on what occurred in the ’70s, then the late ’80s, early ’90s.”
In other words, the 1980s brick ended up being replaced by high-tech appliances, legislative mandates and programs designed to make saving water an easy, albeit necessary, habit. In the same way, officials hope that consumer attitudes about water-wise living will continue evolving to keep up with the reality of life in the 21st century.
