Pasadena Sub Rosa: IS WATER CONSERVATION A PRESERVATION & CULTURAL ISSUE IN PASADENA?

Above: Tucson, Arizona luxury home
(click on above photo to enlarge

Above: Painting by R. Kenton Nelson typical of Pasadena residential street scene (click to enlarge)
Hat Tip: Susan - Pasadena

"If you go to Tucson, Arizona, you don't see lawns - you see cactus and desert plants," said Czamanske. "They use about half the amount of water we do." -- David Czamanske, Sierra Club

Here's a little thought experiment for you on the City of Pasadena's proposed implementation of water rate hikes to achieve a 10% cut in water use. See *Water rate hikes loom for Pasadena residents,* Pasadena Star News, here:
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ci_11638019 .

But what are the cultural and preservation implications, if any, in a 10% reduction in water usage?

Pasadena has about 143,400 residents comprised of about 51,973 households (as of 2007). One acre foot of water supplies two households enough water for one year. So if we divide 51,973 household by 2 we get an estimated amount of acre feet of water for Pasadena for one year -- 25,987 acre feet of water (an acre foot of water is an acre of land with one foot high of water).

If the City wants a 10% reduction in water consumption that will equate to 2,597 acre feet of water. MWD sells imported water to the City of Pasadena for about $450 per acre foot. That would equate to $1,693,925 for 10% of water usage ($450 x 2,597 acre feet). So if Pasadena uses 10% less water it will hypothetically avoid $1,693,925 in water purchases. But what will it take for water users to reduce water consumption by 10%?

If a 10% reduction in water use can be achieved from indoor uses (washing, showers, cooking, flushing), that would be great. But it is unlikely given that indoor use of water only represents about 25% of total home water consumption.

If 10% has to be reduced from outdoor usage (landscape watering), then there may be a price to be paid and a value to be lost for reducing water. About 75% of urban water usage is for outdoor landscaping and swimming pools. Perhaps everyone can conserve 10% of water by watering only during night hours. Again, that would have minimal impact and there would be no discernible preservation or cultural impacts.

But what if we asked 5,193 households (10% of households) to remove their front yard landscaping and replace it with drought tolerant landscaping (xeriscaping) to achieve, say, an assumed 10% reduction in water usage city wide; as is presently proposed by David Czamanske and the Sierra Club?

Let's assume that it would minimally cost $10,000 per household to remove existing front yard landscaping and replace it with drought landscaping. That would equate to $51,930,000 in re-landscaping costs for 5,193 households (10% of households). Probably not even the Federal stimulus package could afford to re-landscape 10% of the front yards in Pasadena at that cost.

To achieve a hypothetical $1,693,925 annual reduction in water bills about $51.93 million would have to be spent. It would take about 30 years to achieve payback (starting during an economic Depression)

David Czamanske of the Sierra Club is recently cited in the Pasadena Star News as saying that in Arizona people landscape their yards with rock gardens and cactus and don't use as much water. But what would be the resulting impact on property values and cultural values if Pasadena implemented such a radical standard? Why would people live in Pasadena instead of, say, Tucson, Arizona? Czamanske and the Sierra Club apparently haven't a clue as to what it would cost to take out lawns and rose gardens in the front yards of homes in Pasadena and replace them with rocks, cactus and pots.

Czamanske also cites the example of the Irvine Ranch Water District as using only 90 gallons of water per day compared to Pasadena's 190 gallons. The Irvine Ranch is a master-planned community with Homeowner's Associations which manage each village including the landscaping and irrigation of vegetation. This is not comparable to Pasadena.

Perhaps more importantly, what would Pasadena Heritage, the Pasadena Historical Society, and other preservation organizations say about effectively pulling up 10% of the front lawns in Pasadena and replacing them with rocks and cactus? What would real estate brokers say about why people move to Pasadena to live in a perceived wealthy community? Would owners of mansion properties so characteristic of Pasadena replace their palacious front lawns and gardens with rock and cactus gardens?

The problem of water conservation is a cultural and preservation issue as much as it is a conservation, property value or cost issue. At its heart it is an issue of the cultural image of Pasadena. Real estate values reflect powerful cultural forces and values as well as monetary values.

And all this begs the question: can the City impose such a water rate restructuring without going through the environmental clearance process? And would preservationists bring a legal challenge as part of the clearance process?

If Pasadena has learned anything from its recent fiasco with the Arts Commission trying to impose its standard of art on the powerful preservationists in Pasadena, it is that one ought to check with them, and the many equally powerful neighborhood associations, early on before initiating any radical water conservation efforts which involve preservation or cultural impacts.

We have just witnessed a conflict between the artists and the preservationists in Pasadena over the proposed placement of ultra-modern art out of context in a Mediterranean style civic plaza and conference center. Are we about to experience a similar fracturing between the environmentalists and the preservationists? I think I know which group is more powerful.

And to think the David Czamanske and the Sierra Club are the leading environmental group in Pasadena which the city movers and shakers listen to about the shift to Green Power and the reduction of carbon emissions and global warming, an issue that is many, many more times complex than drought management. The heavens may not pour enough water and dump enough snow pack in the Sierras to solve our present drought, but nonetheless perhaps heaven can save us from the bum steers of the Sierra Club.

NOTE: The calculations above are only for a thinking exercise to estimate the magnitude of order of the cost-benefit of implementing drought landscaping under a preservation worst-case scenario (Tucson, Arizona) and not to calculate actual costs or water bill savings or cost/benefit of water conservation from a best-case preservation scenario (Irvine Ranch, California).

Comments

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Water conservation as a preservation and cultural issue -- that's IT! I love it.
Funny, thinking lately about Czamanske spreading the gospel of Pasadenans getting rid of their lawns, I thought of the R. Kenton Nelson paintings which make almost a fetish of Pasadena's smooth, lush, green lawns. You can't think of Pasadena without thinking of the mansions and lush lawns!

Posted by: Susan | February 08, 2009 at 11:57 PM

Funny take on this, although I hope nobody takes your post seriously. There is very little that can be done legally to challenge required rationing based on the environmental clearance process. As iconic as Pasadena lawns are, there is an underlying challenge to those lawns that is waiting in the wings based on the California Constitution requirement that water use be reasonable. So, is it reasonable to use water for lawns during drought conditions when other similarly situated water districts (such as Irvine) use considerably less water? I think any sane judge would tell you to put rock over that dry, brown patch formerly known as a lawn ;) J/K, there are drought tolerant grasses I've seen used throughout the Pasadena area so I'd expect that we will see more of them in the near future.

Posted by: dfb | February 15, 2009 at 12:49 AM