When a master planned community called The Preserve was approved in Chino six years ago, developer Randall Lewis recalls, Davis and Atwater asked if he would mind "trying some things."
Lewis installed pipes to carry reclaimed water to common areas, median strips and parks, all of which are irrigated with recycled water supplied by the Inland Empire agency's sewage treatment plants.
Many lots are landscaped with drought-tolerant plants rather than grass. Runoff from streets lined with two-story houses flows into a 20-acre basin.
The area doubles as a burrowing owl sanctuary and a wetland, filtering the drain water before it flows into creeks and percolates back into the aquifer.
When the development is finished, Atwater says, none of its roughly 10,000 homes will need a drop of imported water.
Perpetually drought-racked Southern California is finally looking to some common-sense alternatives for water other than shipping it in from outlying areas. Re-plenishing aquifers from run-off and reclaimed water, desalination plants, household rainwater cisterns, drought (and gardener!) resistant lawns, toilet-to-tap (though we are still kind of sketchy on that one)… it’s all good and represents the “all of the above” mentality we wish extended to our nation’s energy policy.
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3 comments:
I still wish someone would look into reclaiming ocean water, but this is a good start!
Foxie, the city of Carlsbad a few miles north of here will soon be constructing 500,000 gallon/day desalination plant.
The company that will operate it, spent years taking on the Coastal Commission and the environmentalists but finally succeeded.
So it would appear that, yes, help and common sense are on the way.
I'll cross my fingers until it's functioning, but that IS good news!
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