Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
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I’ve been running low flow toilet replacement programs in Tehachapi Valley since 2014. The programs are almost over, and now is the time to heap glory on those who participated. Announcing the winners of the highly coveted Potty Awards! In the Commercial Category, demonstrating the old adage, the more you flush, the more you save…the envelope please. It’s Kelcy’s Café! Kelcy’s is saving an average of 22,000 gallons of water per month with their new low flow toilets and the other water saving measures they’ve put in place. Thanks to all of Ke...
Fire clearance season comes early this year, and the sound of mowers and weed whackers echoes off the mountainsides. Just what are we whacking anyway, and what if it took almost no extra effort to increase the amount and variety of wildflowers on your land? Since Spaniards brought cattle to the new world, California has undergone a wholesale change from native perennial flowering plants and grasses to non-native annual grasses that grow fast, die young, and fuel conflagrations of wildfire. Most...
Don’t make me send this money back to the State! The Toilet Rebate Program so many of you participated in (thanks!) is financed through a State Grant. The Grant contract deadline is looming, and toilet rebate applications must be received at TCCWD by August 31, 2017. The Program was set up to provide rebates for 1,000 toilets, and as I’m typing, we’ve provided 698 rebates. Any money we don’t use will be re-absorbed into the State coffers. Don’t make me send the money back. It’s up to you to make sure we use it all up! If you’ve already chang...
Abundant rain and snow are greening the hillsides and vacant lots. Spring comes early in a Mediterranean climate. California (except for our deserts) is one of a handful of places in the world with this type of climate, which is characterized by moderate wet winters and hot dry summers. California native plants come to life with the winter rains, and many grow like crazy and bloom in early to mid-spring, while plants in the rest of the country are just starting to come out of winter dormancy. As summer gets hotter and dryer, many of the...
I’ve used the analogy before about our water supply being like a bank account. Much of the savings account, the already overused water stored underground, has been exasperated by five years of drought. It will take some time to recover that savings. A value of the drought was to open our eyes to the precariousness of the California water supply in the face of ever increasing population. This has spurred all kinds of interest groups at high levels to move toward more sustainable solutions. Here in the Tehachapi Valley, 50 percent of our water s...
I had a tough time coming up with a title for this article. I wanted to go with “Winter is Here” but only other Game of Thrones fans would get the deeper implications of that title. I thought about “Dreaming of a White Christmas,” but snow isn’t really white. It is clear! Light bouncing around in the snow crystals makes it look white to our eyes. I thought about “Let it Snow, Let it Snow…,” but we got graupel, tiny snowpuffs that look like those Styrofoam balls that spill everywhere when the dog rips apart a stuffed animal. Light and fluff...
I’m not very philosophical, so I always appreciate when others present ideas in a way that helps me think about stuff. One of the aspects of Social Development Theory outlines how there are different spheres or ecosystems (e.g., self, family, community, country, world) in which any individual moves or operates. As water conservation coordinator, part of my job is to influence people, and I might try different approaches depending on your focus. We all know people who are focused on self. They’re tough to influence because they’re absol...
I was really excited to see most of the Tehachapi City Council candidates list water issues and aging infrastructure among their top concerns. TCCWD just turned 50, and you can bet 50-year-old pipes pumping water up the mountain under pressure is one of our top concerns! I wonder if people get why the candidates would have water as a top concern. You turn on the faucet and water comes out. As long as you pay your bill - no problem. Sustainability is quite the buzz word lately, but what does that really mean for Tehachapi Valley water supply?...
This morning I stepped out my door and immediately turned back inside to grab a jacket. It seems like Fall is here, and we’ll be turning the clocks back in just a few weeks. My favorite clue is the California buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum). The flowers that have covered the shrub in white all summer have turned a rich rusty or chocolaty brown. Your lawn grasses are starting to respond to the cooling weather, growth has slowed way down. The green leaves will start to change to gold as the grass goes dormant for the winter. The lawn d...
Maybe you thought about removing your lawn and putting in a low water use landscape with financial assistance from the Turf Removal Rebate, but were clueless how to go about it. Here is a plan for a low cost, low maintenance landscape with step-by-step directions and a budget. It is based on removing 1000 square feet of turf, meeting the program requirements, and receiving a rebate for the total cost of the new landscape. How simple is that? Step one is to apply for the rebate online at...
Wherever I drive in our beautiful valley, I’m forever looking at landscapes. Lately I’ve noticed an increase in yards that have opted for that bare dirt look. The best thing about a dirt yard is that it needs no irrigation! Another increasingly common drought-induced landscape fashion is the weed lawn. You all are doing a wonderful job of conserving water, but I always wonder what happens next, and I always hope the yards don’t end up going right back to thirsty green lawns sometime in the future. What if you could have a green lawn that needs...
We’re getting to the really hot part of the year, and lawns everywhere are getting that golden glow. Don’t panic! Fescue grass has a strategy to survive a hot dry summer – it goes dormant. Gold is good, it means the grass has hunkered down and is keeping just a core part of itself alive until the weather cools and the rains come again. We live in a Mediterranean climate, which is characterized by moderate wet winters and hot dry summers (well, moderate compared to Minnesota). Fescue grass is native to the Mediterranean part of Europe, which als...
Here at Tehachapi-Cummings County Water District (TCCWD), we’ve been very actively promoting the State Department of Water Resources Turf Replacement Rebate Program (up to $2000) and providing assistance to help residents through the process. Assistance can be through a free Landscape Consultation at your home, just call for an appointment. And starting July 28, we will offer a free four-part workshop to guide you through the re-landscaping process (see our ad below for location and other information). While removing your lawn and replacing i...
The drought continues, and smart homeowners everywhere are asking for help with their irrigation systems. To celebrate Smart Irrigation Month, we are offering free irrigation check-ups! Actually, the irrigation check-ups are always free, but this July, 2016, they are extra free. What a concept! A lot of us have irrigation systems, but did anyone help you learn how to set the timer? How about that spot in the lawn that never gets green. Do you just crank up the minutes for that irrigation zone and forget about it? Do you search for leaks by...
Trees are having a tough time right now because of the drought. Nobody knows better than residents of Bear Valley Springs and other forested areas. The drought has weakened the trees and left them more vulnerable to bark beetles, mistletoe, and other pests and diseases. When was the last time you took a good look at the trees in your yard or along your street? How many of us have a tree in the middle of the lawn, and have stopped (or at least reduced) watering the lawn. That tree had an easy life up until now, and didn’t need to grow its r...
Water is amazing. We tend to take it for granted, turn on the faucet and out it flows. Flush the toilet and away it goes. Put your glass under the ice dispenser, and clunk, clunk, clunk, out comes solid water. Here are some fun water facts to help you appreciate this fabulous fluid, or solid, or vapor. Remember the water molecule, that Mickey Mouse shape with one oxygen atom and two hydrogens sticking out like ears? Molecules are surrounded by a whirling cloud of electrons and protons. The water molecule is polar, which means that the negativel...
Clothing fashions come and go. Did you know that there are landscape fashions too? For example, in the 1630s, “tulip mania” swept the Netherlands. The English cottage garden is a landscape fashion. So is lawn. The lawn fashion started in England in the 1700s, where vast sweeping acres of grass surrounded castles, palaces and manor estates and were kept short by sheep. England has a great climate for this type of landscape. There weren’t any irrigation systems back then. The lawn trend in the U.S. was an accumulation of events; the Scott...
I was at a home earlier this week doing a consultation for the homeowner who wanted to remove some lawn and take advantage of the turf removal rebate. Her lawn looked really healthy – and she only watered once a week. I hope one thing we are learning from this drought is that lawns DO NOT need to be watered every day. That’s just plain wasteful (not to mention against the drought emergency regulations). We know with scientific accuracy how much water fescue lawn needs. A watering schedule to keep your lawn healthy would look like this: • Once...
Governor Brown’s executive order (November 13, 2015) will continue emergency drought restrictions another year if drought conditions persist through January 2016. This one’s a slam dunk. Plan for at least another year of limited outdoor watering and the bucket in the shower. It is a slam dunk for two reasons. Reason one is there is no way we will get enough rainfall in one month to relieve drought conditions. Reason two is that it will take at least a couple of years of above average rainfall to refill depleted groundwater levels. What’s a Cal...
When families and friends get together to celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other mid-winter festivals, what is it they gather around? Most of us converge around the dining room table loaded with fabulous traditional food! All that cooking followed by all that cleaning up can use a lot of water. The best way to reduce your cooking and cleaning up water use is – put a plug in it – the sink, that is. Probably the biggest water-saving opportunity in the kitchen is rinsing dirty dishes. Scrape the leftover food into the trash instead of using...
I was at a home earlier this week doing a consultation for the homeowner who wanted to remove some lawn and take advantage of the turf removal rebate. Her lawn looked really healthy – and she only watered once a week. I hope one thing we are learning from this drought is that lawns DO NOT need to be watered every day. That’s just plain wasteful (not to mention against the drought emergency regulations). We know with scientific accuracy how much water fescue lawn needs. A watering schedule to keep your lawn healthy would look like this: • Once...
Meteorologists at NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association) have stated they are 95% sure we will have an El Nino winter. We can expect abundant rain and snow, flooding and mudslides. Batten down the hatches! Will this “fix” the drought? Can we go back to normal now? Sorry, but no. After four years of drought, the moisture in the deeper soils and the groundwater stores have been deeply depleted. It will take several years of wet or at least normal weather to replace this water. That’s a fairly big picture view of our situation, but t...
I don’t really mean that, but it caught your attention, didn’t it? What I hope to help you understand is that plants have their own set of characteristics, agendas, strategies, and abilities that we can take advantage of to save a ton of water on that quarter acre piece of land that we call home. Anthropocentrism is the characteristic of regarding humankind as the central or most important element of existence, especially as opposed to animals. Notice this definition doesn’t even bother to mention plants. To save water in the landscape, we ne...
If you’ve ever thought about changing out your lawn for a waterwise garden NOW is the time! The State Department of Water Resources (DWR) opened their Turf Replacement Rebate Program earlier this month. Rebates are $2 per square foot of lawn removed, up to 1,000 square feet of lawn or $2,000. You must have lawn – dead or alive – to qualify. You are especially well qualified to be eligible for a rebate for two reasons. Kern County is one of the ten San Joaquin Valley counties where DWR is directing extra funding. Also, residents of the city...
The Low Flow Toilet Direct Install Program is winding to a close. That’s the program for City of Tehachapi residents that included free toilets and free installation. We officially stopped taking applications the end of June, and are finishing up the installs through July. Thank you so much to all that participated! Together we’ve saved well over 8 Million Gallons a Year! Now I need to ask you participants for one more thing. Please let me know about your new toilets! If you think your new toilets are wonderful, well, of course I’d love to hear...
