Living with drought: How Hollister is coping

Many communities have been told to meet target water reductions or face fines. However there are some properties that don’t have set targets and could possibly go under the radar.

The Water Resources Commission of San Benito County maintains city and county water resources. However, it doesn’t have much say when it comes to properties that run on privately owned wells. Many have to police themselves.

“We have no mechanism to regulate that at all,” Shawn Novack with the WRCSBA said. “We are asking people with wells to help us and reduce their usage as well. And most of the people on wells are aware their ground water is decreasing, so they are going to slow down their usage of that water too. I think a lot of people with wells are more in tuned with their water supply than most city dwellers.”

There are some developments in Hollister already doing that. However, other homeowners like Eleanor Denice, know they don’t have the water to waste. She has two wells and springs. One of those springs is already running dry.

“We are saving resources and a lot of the properties around here are having severe water shortages,” Denice said. “And we started noticing that our water tanks were empty a lot of the times and we knew we had to do something.”

She has installed artificial turf. Like many others, she doesn’t want to lose green grass because of the drought.

“Turf in this area probably uses 65 to 70 inches of water a year,” Novack said. “On average, which we haven’t seen in a long time, we get 13 inches of rain. That means people have to supplement their water with that amount to make up for that difference.”

As you can imagine, the artificial grass industry is booming. But for many neighbors in San Benito County, they can’t get any sort of rebate from it.

“This is such a save on money because you don’t need a gardener,” Denice said. “You don’t have sprinklers; you don’t have any water problems. It’s hardly any maintenance whatsoever.”

However, she’s not eligible to get any rebate for ripping out her grass, even though neighbors in other parts of the Central Coast do.

“San Benito County isn’t offering as a rebate as of right now,” Kevin Moore, Dir. Of Operations, Opa Farms said, “whereas Monterey and Santa Cruz counties are.”

“I don’t really understand when all of the other counties around us do,” Denice said. “It’s an incentive for people in town to have to have the money to put out and install this new lawn system to get some of it back.”

Artificial turf isn’t cheap. To help offset some of the costs, a rebate program would serve as an incentive to new customers. However, the Water Resources Commission says it has several issues with it.

“As far as this program goes, we’re not allowing it,” Novack said. “And the reasons – I know there is some turf out there that is permeable, but there is some that is not. It will not let water go down through to the soil. Some of this artificial turf, you still need water to clean it or cool it down, like in the summer if you want to lie in it. One of the biggest reasons is it can cause a heat island in your backyard. The heat can bounce onto the side of a building, causing you to use more energy. But the big reason of all, to me, is that it doesn’t attract beneficial insects to your yard like ladybugs or bees or worms into the soil. So as long as we are doing it, we are trying to do it in the most holistic way possible.”

The Water Resources Commission encourages other types of landscape. Some include drought resistant or native California plants, rocks, even mulch. The WRC does have a turf removal program where it’ll pay residents to get rid of their grass, up to 500 square feet. It’s been a successful program with homeowners getting back $27,000. Some 50 homeowners have already gone through the program. Another 50 are already in the process. The WRC hopes to expand it by 1,000 square feet, but that’s up to the City Council to decide.

While the WRC doesn’t encourage artificial turf, the agency isn’t open to it in the future.

“If the artificial turf industry brings their standards up,” Novack explains, “where all turf is permeable, none of it creates a heat island and it attracts beneficial insects I’d be willing to listen. But there’s just too much stuff on the market, all of it doesn’t do those things.”

In the meantime, Moore is hoping to drum up more support.

“There’s some board meetings coming up in June that we are going to attend,” Moore said. “And we have all of our customers calling the county water resource, letting them know they’d like to have a rebate and so on and so forth.”