Posted on 03/28/2009 8:17:24 AM PDT by WayneLusvardi
In 1729, British satirist Jonathan Swift anonymously wrote A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of the Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public. Swift mockingly suggested that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for the English gentry.
Flash forward to Southern California in 2009 and Swift's satiric book might be re-titled something like: A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of the Poor People and Farmers of Central and Southern California from Being an Unsustainable Water Burden and Making Them Beneficial to the Public.
Urban Southern California, like pre-industrial Ireland, is presently facing impoverishment by local water usage cutbacks and water rate hikes coming from the State Capitol (the equivalent of old London) if the State legislature and courts are unable to break a blockade of 85% of water from Northern California due to an environmental lawsuit.
Presently, Southern California cities are facing the specter of water use policing and fines or water rate increases to bring about a modest 10% curtailment in water consumption. On a more serious level, a modest proposal for achieving the mandatory minimum 10% water conservation might have been to drought-scape the "tree lawn rows" in front of each residential property.
What you might ask is a tree lawn strip or row? A "Tree lawn row" is the land area between the concrete curb and the paved sidewalk and is typically planted with trees and lawns.
A "tree lawn row" goes my many other terms: sidewalk buffer, berm, verge, nature strip, utility strip, planting strip, parkway, or even devil's strip (the name given it in Akron, Ohio). Let's see the Southern California equivalent term to "devil's strip" would be a Santanas strip (for Satan or devil strip).
Tree lawn rows are mostly in residential areas and typically are encumbered by city easements for sidewalks, curb, gutter and driveways, underground utilities and street trees. In Pasadena we might as well as just call them Imperial Ficus Rows; meaning they are under sovereign control of the Green Ficus tree lobby (i.e. the Devil strip lobby).
For example, by my very rough estimation the total land area of "tree lawn rows" in the City of Pasadena is approximately 215 acres, or coincidentally one-tenth of the total land area in the City. Most of these tree lawn areas are planted with grass in residential districts and are irrigated with sprinkler systems or by hand held water hoses. Tree Lawn rows vary in width from about 5 feet to 10 feet excluding the paved sidewalk area.
The California Youth Conservation Corps has been hit hard by the State budget deficit. However, US Forest Service Chief Abigail Kimbell recently announced that the agency expects to create 23,500 jobs with one billion dollars in funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the economic stimulus plan. What better use of Stimulus funds could be made in Southern California, and particularly in Pasadena, than to replace the existing grass in Tree-Lawn Rows with water saving landscaping?
What would be the benefits and costs of such a proposal?
1. It would have an immediate impact on water conservation without the expensive cost of tearing out entire front lawns (drought re-landscaping is estimated at $16,700 for a full 50' x 100' lot).
2. It would be a highly visible project which would put water conservation on the minds of homeowners and, once started, would launch a "keep up with the Joneses" neighborhood mindset.
3. It would provide immediate jobs without much training requirement.
4. Using data from Susan Jett, landscape designer, each re-planted Tree-Lawn strip could save 21,600 gallons of water per year and reduce maintenance costs and time (see link below). The water savings could reflect about 13% of the total household water consumption per year.
5. Such projects are unlikely to meet resistance from neighborhood and environmental interest groups. Tree-law row drought re-landscaping would beautify the city.
6. Private costs to re-landscape a Tree-Lawn Row could range from about $500 to $1,500 depending mainly on labor cost. Labor costs could be reduced if Conservation Corps labor could be utilized.
7. Cities already have easements over Tree-Lawn Rows which would give them access and municipal insurance coverage for any re-landscaping projects.
8. Such projects would likely be best implemented with the consent of each homeowner. However, little resistance by homeowners is anticipated because such re-landscaping would not entail the demolition and replacement of their existing front lawns.
Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal is satire; the modest proposal above to drought landscape Tree-Lawn Rows is a serious proposal notwithstanding the humorous rhetoric. It is too late to implement such a project to bring about any significant water savings this year before the Metropolitan Water District ups wholesale water rates and cuts imported water deliveries. Nonetheless, it is a modest proposal that ought to be explored by local elected leaders.
Data Source: Adrian Higgins, "Working Toward Guidelines for a Truly Green Garden," Washington Times, Feb. 5, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/04/AR2009020401255.html
how about just not watering the lawn, it will die, and no longer need mowing. why the tax payers should cough up money for landscaping during this deficit is beyond me. dont we have any better priorities while we are in so much debt.
secondly do we really want our kids to join some American version of a Chinese collective, doing manual labor for the state????
sound like another waste of tax money to me. just stop watering teh lawns if there is a drought, duh, simple!!!!
amke=Make. sheesh.
I agree. Just about every year in "rainy" W. Washington, we are told that we have a summer drought and don't water- and then those same summers, I have gone down to S. California or Arizona and people have lush, green lawns and huge swimming pools!
I thought everyone called them tree belts. I learn something new every day.
Southern California is not a desert. Los Angeles Basin averages 15 inches of rainfall a year. Theoretically, that is sufficient to meet all local water needs; but most of it runs off into the sea. Some Southern California cities are totally self-sustaining with local groundwater; others have to rely nearly totally on imported water.
Sooner or later, someone will realize that trees need water too....
In Pasadena, ficus trees are water thirsty but wildly popular with the Greenie crowd who don’t want them removed. But oak trees don’t need watering and in fact don’t like too much water. Interesting that the Greenies are trying to remove non-native vegetation in forests and wetlands but don’t want to have the non-native Ficus trees removed along the Tree-Lawn belts in their neighborhoods.
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