LANDSCAPING
hen Bernadette
Balics opened Eco-
logical Landscape
Design in Davis in
2001, she was one of
just a few business-
es in the Capital Region that designed
landscapes according to eco-friendly
and water-efficient principles. Today,
she has lots of competitors, and there’s
plenty of business for everyone.
Balics’ industry is at the forefront
of a major shift in how
California is responding
to a limited water supply
as demands increase and
climate change brings more
extreme weather events
like droughts that further
destabilize the water sup-
ply. Californians use ap-
proximately 8-million-acre
feet of water annually for
urban use, according to a
report from the Public Pol-
icy Institute of California.
Of that, nearly half goes to
irrigating landscapes, more
than 1.3 trillion gallons of
water (because of changes
in landscaping and in-
creased awareness, that
is down approximately
20 percent from just
10 years ago).
In January, a draft of
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Water
Resilience Portfolio was
released, citing more than
100 recommendations to
shore up California’s long-term water
resiliency. The plan identifies orna-
mental landscapes and turf as a target
for reducing water use and looks
to simplify the state’s Model Water
Efficient Landscape Ordinance to help
reach its goals.
In its simplest terms, the ordinance
requires residential and commercial
projects with new landscapes more
than 500 square feet and renovated
landscapes more than 2,500 square
feet to comply with a water budget
using drought-tolerant plants irrigated
with efficient technology such as smart
controllers and drip irrigation. The
water budget is calculated based on
local weather, the plants used and the
size of the landscape. It’s submitted as
part of a project’s landscape plans to
be reviewed, enforced and approved by
cities, just like other building codes.
Drive through new developments
across the Capital Region like East
Sacramento’s McKinley Village or
Folsom’s Folsom Ranch — the larg-
Building Standards Code — have com-
plicated an already complex and diffi-
cult regulation, resulting in fragmented
adoption, implementation and manda-
tory reporting throughout the state.
Compounding the issue,
MWELO’s current version is limited
to the design and build of a landscape
where the calculated water budget
is theoretical, but doesn’t address
maintenance where actual water effi-
ciency comes into play. Additionally, it
doesn’t address traditional
landscapes with sprawling
swaths of grass installed
before MWELO limited turf
to no more than 25 percent
of the landscape.
While compliance with
regulations like MWELO es-
tablishes a baseline for water
efficiency, it’s part of a much
larger conversation about
how we sustain the planet.
The ordinance presents
an opportunity to shift the
way we think about what an
eco-friendly landscape can do
when we move beyond com-
pliance toward practices that
conserve all natural resources
and maximize water effi-
ciency. That’s important for
California as it seeks to strike
a balance for an uncertain
water supply among agricul-
ture, the environment and
cities, while it simultaneously
addresses human activity
that is shifting the climate.
“A large part of that is the
lack of knowledge. People just
don’t have the special training
to understand the landscape.
And there’s still a lot of
people in the landscape
industry who don’t understand
the ordinance or that they
have to comply with
a water budget.”
30
comstocksmag.com | May 2020
JULIE SAARE-EDMONDS
SENIOR ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENTIST,
DEPARTMENT OF WATER RESOURCES
est master-planned community in
the foothills in decades — or those
popping up in Roseville, Rocklin, Elk
Grove and Woodland, and one will
see a distinctly different landscape
than ones installed just 10 years ago.
Low- to medium-water-use plants are
surrounded by bark mulch with little
or no grass, irrigated primarily with a
drip system. That’s MWELO in action.
But it’s not that simple. While
versions of MWELO have been in place
since 1992, updates — required every
three years by the California Green
Addressing barriers
In 2009, the Department of Water Re-
sources mandated the state’s roughly
540 land-use agencies — cities and
counties — adopt the model ordinance,
or implement stronger measures,
and enforce it locally. That’s been a
challenge. Julie Saare-Edmonds, senior
environmental scientist at the DWR’s
Water Use Efficiency Branch, says only
about 26 percent of agencies submitted
their mandatory reports document-
ing implementation efforts in 2017,