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Could T.R.E.E.S. Save Bay?
Forward thinkers often lament that efforts to solve pressing environmental problems tend to be fragmented among many different agencies, although the problems themselves are often interrelated. Which may be why some Bay Area agency insiders are waxing enthusiastic about a promising Los Angeles project that is simultaneously addressing stormwater runoff, water conservation, groundwater, flood control, air quality, urban forestry and energy conservation.
Through an unusual coalition of government agencies and environmentalists, Trans-Agency Resources for Environmental and Economic Sustainability - T.R.E.E.S. - is creating a blueprint for an integrated approach to environmental problems by applying a series of Best Management Practices (BMPs) to industrial sites, commercial buildings, schools, apartments and single family homes. The BMPs include planting trees in strategiclocations, installing cisterns, dry wells and graywater systems, mulching and removing pavement.
"The project brings together all of the different agencies involved with water quality and related issues in the Los Angeles Basin and takes a strategic and integrated approach to how we can begin retrofitting our watersheds," says Jovita Pajarillo of EPA Region 9, which provided some funding for the project.
A project of the environmental organization TreePeople, T.R.E.E.S. kicked off in 1997 with a design charrette that teamed city planners, landscape architects, engineers, urban foresters and public agency staff to develop the BMPS. The project then devised a cost-benefit analysis that was used to select the BMPs with the greatest potential for widespread implementation, and created an interactive GIS-based computer model to help policy-makers assess the economic, social, health and safety benefits of the BMPs. The project is hopeful that if the BMPs could be implemented citywide, they would cut L.A.'s dependency on imported water by 50%, while lessening the threat of flooding and the quantity of toxic urban runoff, reducing the flow of solid waste to landfills by 30%, improving air and water quality, decreasing energy dependence and creating up 50,000 new jobs.
"This is a huge opportunity to get California on the path to true sustainability," says TreePeople's Andy Lipkis.
Using several of the BMPs, the project has retrofitted a single-family residence in South Los Angeles as a demonstration site. The site now features retention grading and a cistern that collects rainwater from rain gutters and stores it for irrigation during dry months and can also act as a flood control device. According to the T.R.E.E.E.S. website, if cisterns were used in large numbers throughout the Los Angeles basin, they "could be equipped with remote control switches that would enable flood control authorities to use them as a networked reservoir, creating a highly effective water conservation, pollution prevention and flood control system." The demonstration site also has a mulched swale composed of recycled greenwaste from the property and designed to slow the flow of stormwater and filter pollutants, and a driveway drywell system that retains and cleanses rainwater.
T.R.E.E.S.' accomplishments are not limited to demonstration projects, however. According to Lipkis, the Los Angeles Unified School District, based in large part on the project's research and cost-benefit data, decided to replace 30% of the asphalt at 400 schools - 20 million square feet - with trees and permeable surfaces. In addition, the L.A. Regional Water Quality Control Board has adopted regulations requiring certain new developments - parking lots with 25 or more spaces, commercial projects of more than 100,000 square feet, restaurants of more than 5,000 square feet and subdivisions with at least 10 houses, as well as gas stations and auto repair garages - to retain or treat the first three-quarters of an inch of rainfall on site.
"This is a huge breakthrough, says Lipkis, "We designed for 10-inch, 24-hour storms and used our demo sites to prove it was feasible. The fact thatwe did it weighed very heavily on the Board's decision to go ahead when the opposition resisted with statements that it couldn't be done." And the L.A. County Department of Public Works has organized a taskforce to explore the feasibility of retrofitting a 2,700 acre urban watershed with the T.R.E.E.S. BMPs instead of building a $42 million stormdrain.
All this has caught the attention of Bay Area water-watchers. After Lipkis spoke about T.R.E.E.S. at last year's California Water Policy Conference, the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) invited him to the Bay Area for a December 13 briefing to the agency's board of directors. "There is great potential to apply the T.R.E.E.S. concepts in the Bay Area," says EBMUD staffer Doug Wallace. He cautions, however, that anyone undertaking such a program would have to tailor it to the Bay Area's topography and agency jurisdictions, which differ significantly from those of Los Angeles.
T.R.E.E.S. enthusiasts warn that any similar Bay Area effort has a long road ahead of it. "Those interested in promoting a multi-agency approach fostering T.R.E.E.S. project concepts should educate their decision makers," says Wallace, "and bring together those stakeholders with complementary missions for the purpose of pursuing joint projects."
Contact : Andy Lipkis (818)623-4848 or Jovita Pajarillo (415)744-2011
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