The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power will unveil a plan today to capture stormwater runoff and use it to refill underground supplies rather than allow it to drain into the Pacific Ocean via storm channels.
For decades, environmental activists such as Andy Lipkis have argued that this ritual flushing of stormwater was a form of profligacy Los Angeles could ill afford and that rain water could be captured before it picked up ground contaminants and used for irrigation and other purposes.
But when Lipkis, the president and founder of TreePeople began proposing more than 20 years ago that the city “harvest” rainwater from the sky, the response was always the same.
“They asked me what planet I was from. What was I smoking?” Lipkis told the Los Angeles Times.
But now — amid drought, restrictions on urban water use and increases in the cost of imported water — stormwater runoff is seen as more than just a flood risk.
At a public hearing today, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power will present its Stormwater Capture Master Plan, which officials say will reduce the city’s future reliance on imported water and perhaps address a predicted trend toward heavier, more intense rainfall, The Times reported.
The plan includes three large-scale projects in the San Fernando Valley that would collect rainfall in basins or washes and then slowly feed it into the city’s primary underground water source — a process known as aquifer recharge, according to the newspaper
The proposal also lists a variety of smaller features that would be located on public, private and commercial properties throughout the city: water- permeable surfaces that would help recharge the San Fernando Valley groundwater basin, as well as redesigned “green streets” and pocket parks.”
Incentive programs would be used to encourage homeowners, schools or businesses to install large cisterns, or create so-called rain gardens and swales that would help clean stormwater runoff and direct it to landscaping or capture basins, The Times reported.
The city now collects an average of 27,000 acre-feet of rainwater each year. That water is captured in flood control dams and spreading grounds, where it is allowed to filter into the aquifer. Under the Stormwater Capture Master Plan, the city could collect 100,000 to 200,000 additional acre-feet of rainwater each year by 2035, depending on how aggressively it pursued the plan, officials told The Times.
One acre-foot of water is equal to 326,000 gallons, or about enough to supply two households with water for a year.
