In March, with little fanfare, the Board of Supervisors passed the Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance to comply with a State law that requires every city and county to adopt efficiency standards for landscaping. It applies to new home construction that plans to have 2,500 square feet or more of decorative plantings. It doesn’t apply to food-producing gardens or agricultural crops.

The problem the ordinance seeks to address is overdrawing the sustainable yield of most groundwater aquifers in the County. Data is pretty limited, but that doesn’t appear to be the case in most or all of Bonny Doon. Anecdotally, new wells in Bonny Doon are being drilled deeper as the years go by. Whether that means the aquifers or water tables are being drawn down, or that people want (and can afford) to have deeper wells to ensure greater and more reliable supplies is unknown.

New home building permit applications must file a Landscape Plan or a Water Efficient Landscape Application Checklist and Certificate. If the project is exempt, such as a second unit, landscape areas installed solely for stormwater treatment, or where the irrigation system will be removed a year or two after construction when the plants become established, you will only have to check a box denoting that fact. Otherwise, you will have to indicate that you are meeting the Maximum Water Allowance, which is calculated by a formula involving the estimated evaporation rate for your parcel, according to the County’s GIS data.

Landscape and irrigation plans that trigger the ordinance’s requirements must be inspected after installation by an independent professional, who may be a Certified Irrigation Designer, civil engineer or landscaped architect, among others. The Planning Dept. recommends that you hire that person in advance that all the irrigation control measures and devices are installed correctly.

The ordinance recommends finding alternatives to the classic American lawn, the use of Mediterranean plants, which use little water, graywater systems and other means of reducing water use.

Since water supplies are so strained in much of Santa Cruz County, this ordinance is heartily applauded. However, the need for it in Bonny Doon, much of which is water rich, is less easy to justify.

Mountain Lion Project Publishes Results

UCSC Puma Project researchers, who have been tagging and tracking mountain lions in the Santa Cruz Mountains for 3 years, have published their findings in the online journal PLOS | ONE.

The research team, headed by Chris Wilmers, associate professor of environmental studies, tracked 20 pumas over 6,600-square miles of territory, chronicled human development influences the cats' physiology, behavior, ecology and conservation. Wilmers and his team attached tags and GPS transmitters with accelerometers, (which measure movement and body position or orientation) to 37 lions, and put camera traps in key locations. Of the 37 lions, 11 died during the study, 8 of them shot while attacking domestic livestock.

We hope to have Wilmers, who spoke at the January 2009 RBDA meeting, to an upcoming meeting to discuss his team’s findings in detail.

Large House Law Revised

In April the Board of Supervisors approved a final revision of the Large Dwelling Ordinance (SCCC 13.10.325), reducing the square footage of a proposed house that triggers a public review from 7,000 to 5,000 square feet. Now, the public will be able to comment on the development of houses as large as 5,000 square feet or greater in writing and at a public hearing, and will have the right to appeal any decision all the way to the Board of Supervisors.

This and several other changes were advocated by your RBDA Board to clean up the language in what was a confusing law, and close loopholes that made it possible for property owners to skirt the law’s intentions through minor and inconsequential labeling of areas of the proposed dwelling.

We greatly appreciate the work of Rachel Dann of Supervisor Neal Coonerty’s office, and the support of Supervisor Coonerty, in pushing the revised ordinance through the Planning Dept. and the Board of Supervisors.

We felt that the former law did little to regulate the construction of boarding house-like homes to take advantage of the growth of the UCSC student population. Two such dwellings, at 7,000 square foot each, with as many as 15 or more tenants, have been built in Bonny Doon, much to the dismay of neighbors, some of whom have sold their properties and moved in consequence.

The RBDA Board has also proposed other changes, which are being studied by the Planning Dept., to give the public more input into these and other types of very large house proposals.

The change in the law does not prohibit very large homes, but it allows neighbors to have more say about what gets built nearby that impacts their own homes and welfare.