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Demonstration Garden Project

Water Conservation

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Mission Statement

"When Water Has To Be Managed, We Have a Plan"

How have we reduced water waste?

The City has been installing Rain Bird Maxicom Central Irrigation Control for Landscape Maintenance Districts, City Capital Improvement Projects, and retrofitting existing parks since 1995. Of the 485 irrigation controllers we presently have, 112 are operating on ET based control. 2 weather stations, 3 additional Rain-cans and wind sensors support these controllers with ET information. We plan on adding 50 controllers to our Maxicom system this next fiscal year; and within five years having every City controller be ET based. The estimated potential water savings of these ET controllers is 170 acre-feet, or 55,423,808 gallons a year.
The City has started a program to remove most if not all of the 1.3 million square feet of nonessential turf from the City Landscape Maintenance Districts.
All maintenance department employees who repair irrigation systems have attended the Rain Bird Irrigation Training Camp, and now use best management practices.
We specify native plant hydroseed for all retention or detention basins, and then reduce or eliminate the supplemental irrigation to all but the trees once the native plant material has been established.
We revised the City engineering standards to require ET based controllers for all new irrigation systems; specify point source irrigation systems for City projects whenever possible to prevent overspray; and include drip and subterranean irrigation systems for front yards, commercial and industrial development.
IA/EPA Certified Irrigation Auditors inspect all new City landscaping before it is accepted to make sure the irrigation system is installed and working as designed.
The City of Palmdale is now an EPA WaterSense Promotional Partner, and each of the Certified Water Auditors is a personal professional EPA WaterSense Partner.

Impact on the Community

Through intelligent water management, the maintenance team estimates a reduction in water use of 20% for fiscal 2007-2008, saving the City General Fund an estimated $235,626.00. As of September 22, 2008 the total years input has not been established. However, the following information was made available to us.
- All the parks and Landscape Maintenance Districts located in the Palmdale Water District show a weighted average savings of 31%, or 56,005,004 gallons (74,873 units) for the months of June, July and August of 2008 from the 2007 usage during that time frame. Cost savings of $1.59 a unit = $119,048.00 in savings for just those three months.
- LA County Water Works provided information for three park sites comparing January through June of both years with a total savings of 3,742,992 gallons or $7,956.00 from these three parks.
- By extrapolating this data into all the parks and Landscape Maintenance Districts that the City maintains, we feel will easily meet our goal for the year.
The City of Palmdale has been a partner in the Antelope Valley Regional Water Management group, which has compiled a regional approach projects list to help manage water conservation in the area.
The City of Palmdale has written a water ordinance along with updating our landscape and irrigation standards to substantially comply with the new State Model Water Ordinance 1881. The ordinance received final approval at the October 15, 2008 City Council meeting along with the revised engineering standards.
The City will be a Weather Reach signal provider for Rain Bird ET Manager at no cost to the citizens or commercial users in our region. The City started using the signal on March 15, 2008 and opened it for public access on August 26, 2008.
City maintenance staff participated in public education videos that were broadcast on our local city channel on:
- Water Auditing
- Weather Stations and ET water management
- Sprinkler Repair
- The City has prepared a video on water conservation that features the demonstration garden, information on our water conservation grants and mentions the Irrigation Association award.
- An interview was conducted with Belle Shaw, host for the Time Warner Cable's Local Edition, on the City's efforts for water conservation. The interview will be broadcast locally, in the Los Angeles basin and Orange County through the month of October.
Provided water conservation tips and pictures of municipal landscaping to the local life style newspaper magazine featuring water conservation.
Volunteer at the yearly Palmdale Water District Conservation Fair to provide conservation information to our citizens.
The City of Palmdale Public Works Department sponsored a conservation theme booth at the City Fall Festival held October 11th and 12th 2008. An estimated 34,000 citizens attended the event. The water conservation video ran on a loop system for the citizens to view and over 500 copies of the City water ordinance and water conservation information was handed out to the citizens over the two-day period.
Helped Palmdale Water District write a water conservation resolution.
The City grinds our street tree trimmings to use as mulch on city projects; also provide to the public at no charge.
Work with a variety of schools and community groups to improve their landscape and irrigation programs.

How do we practice it?
The City of Palmdale Maxicom Committee was originally formed in 1995 when the Rain Bird Maxicom System was selected to provide Central Irrigation Control for the City. The current team meets on a regular basis to fine tune our master plan and discuss any outstanding issues. We have members at every stage of the planning, installation and maintenance of City landscape and irrigation systems. Job duties might define our position on the committee, but we all have equal input and commitment to the plan of making our system as water efficient as possible.

Consistency through team-work
- Initial project plan check for irrigation efficiency & standards. (Connie)
- Inspection of irrigation and landscape installation, which includes water audits of all new landscaping before acceptance of the project. (Mark/Steve)
- Maintenance repair and oversight of established irrigation systems (Steve/Tim/Sean)
- Maxicom system input and daily oversight (Mark/Paul/Tim/Sean)
- Budget and long term planning (Tony/Sean/entire committee)
- Media input has been provided by us all

Rain Bird field test partner for the following products to improve irrigation efficiency

Maxicom2
Falcon rotors
Drip emitters
Link Radio
Spread Spectrum Radio
Weather Reach paging system for ET Manager
Rainbird ET Manager Module

Water Conservation Grants
The City of Palmdale has been awarded $713,833.00 in grants through the State of California Department of Water Resources for Proposition 50 Urban Drought Assistance. The grants will help the City implement our master plan for water conservation in the following ways:

Purchase and install 15 waterless urinals for all City Administrative Buildings, Public libraries, City Theater and Parks and Recreation Building.
Fund the second phase of the newly installed Demonstration Garden to include:
- Purchase of a new Weather Station to be installed at Desert Sands Park
- Pay for the broadcast of Weather Reach Evapotranspiration Data from that Weather Station throughout the down town area for one year.
- Pay for the city's portion of the creation of a Water Wise CD that will feature the regional plant list with pictures to help homeowners redesign their yards. The grant will fund the purchase of approximately 6,000 of these CD's to be distributed to homeowners, and will also be posted on the City Website.
- The purchase of approximately 130 ET based irrigation controllers that will be installed at the homes of the highest water users in a low-income neighborhood that is being revitalized by our housing department.
The third grant of $250,000 will fund the purchase of approximately 250 more ET timers to be utilized at Focus Neighborhood 4.
The fourth grant of $250,000.00 will fund the removal of living turf surrounding the administrative complex and replacing it with artificial turf.
When fully implemented, the estimated water savings for the community is approximately 13 acre-feet a year, or 4,239,282 gallons of water.

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