New state law regulates landscaping

[The Straight Story]

New state law regulates landscaping (CA)


Landscaping is the biggest water-hog in urban Kern County.

So a little-known state law that creates tough new regulations on how landscaping is designed and installed in California could become a big deal here.

....

TO THE DRAWING BOARD

The law, AB 1881, requires local governments to abide by a model landscape and irrigation ordinance written in Sacramento -- or draft an ordinance equally as tough.

"I don't think the model ordinance fits Kern County very well," Ellis said. "But I think we can craft an ordinance that is equally effective."

City of Bakersfield Planning Director Jim Eggert said the city's first look at the rule was a shocker.

"When you first read this thing you want to pull your hair out," he said. "It's not written by somebody who knows how to enforce something like that."

The model ordinance requires new commercial projects and large-lot residential tracts to use dry weather plants, set up a maximum water budget based on a laboratory soils test, dictate the way irrigation is installed, limit the amount of lawn used and require regular audits of a project's water spending, Ellis said.

http://www.bakersfield.com/news/local/x113239327/New-state-law-regulates-landscaping

[Ken Burch]

1. What's the idea? Are people down their doing obscene topiary or something?

n/t.

[pokercat999]

2. Sounds like they are trying to save water, a

depleted resource in most of CA.

[Ken Burch]

5. Why not just do plain old water rationing, then?

n/t.

[etherealtruth]

6. Landscaping does a lot more than change aesthetics or provide screening or privacy

Carefully planned landscaping significantly decreases erosion and storm water runoff, as well as water conservation.

I can't speak to the enforcement of the codes as written but most large scale housing tracts and commercial developments engage the services of landscape design engineers to deal with all of the intricacies of landscape design.

[Ken Burch]

7. That makes sense then.

I thought they were trying to censor people's shrubbery designs or something.

[SmileyRose]

3. I would love it if we could change the mentality in the US

The vast majority of homes have at least some small plot of land. We spend gazillions and considerable labors to live up to the expectation that there will be pretty green grass and pretty well trimmed shrubs. I so dearly wish our mindset would change to look at that little plot of land as food making capacity. ADM has nothing to fear of our local gardens - they can grow ethanol.

[hobbit709]

4. If you live in the heart of desert country

You shouldn't try to make everything look as green as Florida.

Way too much water is used everywhere just to give that lush green lawn look.

[Ken Burch]

8. I've heard tell they got one or two of them movie stars in California

Couldn't they get them critters to put in full size Zen gardens or somethin' and then film them for psa's to encourage people to do low-water or no-water landscape ideas?

[blondeatlast]

9. I live in Phoenix and a spanking new nearby development has an HOA

that allows grass in the front yard.

It looks AWFUL. Seven homes with gravel and desert scaping--then a dark green fescue in the middle of summer. Hideous. (shudder)

[hobbit709]

10. I would never live in a place with an HOA.

My brother had a goround with his a few years back.
The got on his case about planting a dwarf fruit tree in his back yard because that wasn't xeriscape. In their next breath they complained that the buffalo grass in his front yard wasn't St. Augustine.
The only way they could have seen a five foot tree in a yard with a 7 foot fence was to go through the gate and look around.
He told them to get out of his yard and if he caught them in his back yard again, he would have them arrested for trespassing. They got and he never had any more problems with them.
When his neighbors realized that they didn't have to spend $200/mo in the summer to water their grass, they all planted native buffalo grass too.

[pokercat999]

11. A few years ago we moved to a suburb of Charlotte, NC. The

HOA of our development demanded that everyone water their grass in front and all homes had a built in sprinkler system. My first water bill was over $200....for the MONTH. I thought their was a leak, we had that checked, no problems. I saw my next door neighbor and asked him if his water bill was in excess of $200 a month and he stated "I guess you don't water your back yard", "My water bill is over $300 every month". We moved a year later, not because of the water bills but they would have eventually caused me to build another house "further out" where there were no HOAs had we stayed.