John Ossa: Government regulations

In this era of environmental concerns, water shortages and growing populations, federal, state and local governments feel compelled to mandate change.

In California, a well-intentioned Assembly Bill (AB1881) provides the basis for The Model Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance (MWELO). Most new and rehabilitated landscapes are subject to a water efficient landscape ordinance. Public landscapes and private development projects, including developer-installed single-family and multi-family residential landscapes with at least 2,500 sq. ft. of landscape area, are subject to the MWELO.

The provision in the statute that ensures a landscape is allowed sufficient water is a water budget. There are two water budgets in the Model Ordinance. The Maximum Applied Water Allowance (MAWA) and the Estimated Total Water Use (ETWU). The MAWA is the water budget used for compliance and is an annual water allowance based on landscape area, local evapotranspiration and an ET Adjustment Factor of 0.7. The ETWU is annual water use estimation for design purposes and is based on the water needs of the plants actually chosen for a given landscape. The ETWU may not exceed the MAWA.

Many people agree that some mechanism to set a water allowance is fair and necessary. In some areas, local municipalities take the budget concept further and add layers of prescriptive requirements on top of the basic budget concept in an attempt to determine an outcome for every eventuality. This is where many of the problems originate.

It may be a far better approach to simply define the desired outcome (X amount of water per sq. ft.), and let the free market economy solve the different problems that may arise. Instead of legislating against certain types of plants or irrigation hardware, allow the creativity and innovation in the market to create solutions. The green industry has rapidly accelerated its ability to create ecological solutions over the past few years. There is every reason to believe that landscapes can become far more resource efficient and truly sustainable without prescriptive intervention from local government agencies.

A consequence of overzealous regulations and permitting requirements is the requirements for plan checking and interpretation of required documentation has overtaxed existing municipal staff. Not only is the subject matter expertise often lacking, the manpower may not even exist to make plan-compliance decisions.

This dysfunction has created a dynamic where the very contractors who have taken the time to become licensed and certified are penalized the most by virtue of the fact local municipal agencies cannot enforce the overly complicated regulations they promulgated. The outcome of not adequately introducing, supporting and enforcing regulations has driven a significant amount of business to the underground economy.

Even this level of dysfunction could be overcome if the pricing of water was congruent with its true cost and value. However, the price of water is suppressed – and this fact, as much as any other, undermines the desired outcomes and devalues the many hard working and skilled professionals that are in the best position to drive the change our society requires. L&L

John Ossa is the national accounts director at Irrigation Water Technologies America and owns Irrigation Essentials; mail jossa@giemedia.com.