Thanks Chelsea! Here in Lubbock, we generally have relatively dry winters, with most of our annual precipitation coming in April-June, followed quickly by our hot and dry growing season. I’ve been looking at ideas for integrated stormwater harvest at the residential and municipal levels to maybe capitalize on this heavy rainfall early in the season and temporally redistribute it. I, too, am sold on the idea of using a largely native palette. It just makes sense. The biggest problem I’m encountering is restrictive city codes that favor traditional curb and gutter, coupled with public aversion to anything that looks “out of the ordinary.” Here in west Texas, people tend to love the status quo.
However, the issue has just hit people’s pocketbooks for the first time. A few years back, the city built a multimillion dollar drainage system, and, this year, they hiked water rates by 40% to begin funding construction of a 100 mile water pipeline from a reservoir that — get this — is about 700-1000′ lower in elevation. So hopefully people will start becoming more receptive to the idea of alternate residential-scale solutions.
Any ideas that you have used to leverage allowances for these alternate landscapes and street systems in the city codes? Also, any ideas you have to help the public buy into the idea. Oregon is far more open to “green” ideas than Texas, but any ideas are great to get the wheels turning!
