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As the rainy season returns, perhaps your yard or garden would benefit from keeping more of that water around for a while. There's no doubt that the environment as a whole would. Rain gardens are one good way to do just that.
Rain gardens can be added just about anywhere, regardless of soil types. Even thick clays can be amended to accept water more readily, says Chipkin, but that's not always necessary.
To estimate the amount of storage needed, calcuate the surface are that the rainwater will drain off from. An average storm will bring around one inch of rain per square foot. But few rainwater capture systems can hold all the precipitation from major storms. So that gardens that receive that water need to be designed with a outlet for the excess.
Even without adding or changing a garden, there are ways to facilitate increased rainwater absorbtion into the ground through "hardscape reducution" measures. Note that this issue also relates directly to concens about the future reliability of groundwater resources in the Santa Rosa Plain, as previously reported on the North Bay Report.
Top 9 Reasons to Build A
1. Reduces stream flooding and downstream erosion.
2. Provides habitat for wildlife.
3. Requires less maintenance, watering, fertilizers and pesticides than traditional gardens because of use of native and other locally adapted plants.
4. Filters pollutants and reduces pollution in our waterways via native plant roots and healthy soil.
5. Recharges groundwater by allowing water to filter into the ground rather than run along the surface into drains.
6. Reduces the volume of water flowing to sewer treatment facilities.
7. Transforms your property in an inexpensive and easy way.
8. Saves money on landscape irrigation and lowers your water bill.
9. Beautifies neighborhoods, models water conservation.
As demand for fresh water intensifies, subsurface aquifers will be a key part of the competition. But how much water lies below the Santa Rosa Plain, and who does it belong to? These are among the questions to be addressed in a series of public workshops that begin this week.
In addition to measuring and managing the groundwater resource, says Leonard Holt, the planning workshops will also look at water quality concerns, and attempt to quantify the effects tbat newly drilled wells may have on their pre-existing neighbors.
Urban growth in the Santa Rosa plain--which includes most of Santa Rosa and all of Windsor, Cotati and Rohnert Park--has inevitably increased the demand for water from the aquifer below. But Rue Furch notes that same growth has also diminished the region's capacity to replenish the groundwater supply.
The first of three scheduled Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Basin Planning Workshops will be held on Wed., Nov. 17 at the Santa Rosa Veterans Building. Subsequent meetings will be held Dec.2 at the Sebastopol Vets Building and Jan. 12 in Rohnert Park City Hall. The presentation will be the same at all three session, which are each set to run from 6:30 to 9 pm.
One of the goals behind the Green New Deal is also to break down the disconnect between Sonoma and Marin Counties, adds Norman Solomon, because there are numerous areas where a greater awareness between them could benefit both.
One of the big challenges facing the North Bay is getting environmentalists and advocates for social justice to integrate each other's concerns in their activism, says Sonoma County labor leader Lisa Maldanado. She offers an example.
Climate change activists who advocate alternative energy developments and defenders of the natural environment are increasingly finding themselves at odds, a conflict that is now playing out on two ridgetops near Dillon Beach, in northwestern Marin County.
Petaluma garage owner Chips Armstrong, one of the group trying to block the installation of the dual weather towers, explains that his opposition is based in part on the sizable subsidies being given to wind power developers.
David Williard of Sage Renewables, believes that the mistakes made 30 years ago when the Altamont wind farm was first built still color the debate over wind power today, even though modern methods have eased most of those impacts.
The proposed locations for the two test towers are shown on the map below.
