We’re Not In Kansas
Arriving in Tucson, Arizona in the middle of the day, one realizes immediately that one is in a place completely different from Los Angeles or the succulent-loving San Diego, California. Sunny? Yes. Dry? Very. Lawn? Little. The difference in place apparently extends beyond the climate and rainfall to the landscape aesthetic response to that climate. Most of the lawns are found surrounding commercial and public spaces, while residential landscapes are dominated by much more dry-climate-adapted and Tucson-native plants.
G3’s Pamela Berstler
G3’s Pamela Berstler spent the week of the AridLID Conference exploring a variety of approaches to Green Infrastructure, including distributed, community-based solutions and large, end-of-pipe projects. When polled, more than half of the 200 conference attendees could identify the price of gasoline in their neighborhood, but fewer than 10 could identify the price of a gallon of water from the tap, and fewer than 5 could quote the average $2.90/month stormwater abatement fee paid by most Arizona residences. Pamela asked the audience of experts to consider the awareness of the average person’s investment in Green Infrastructure as demonstrated by this poll, and shared some of G3’s program ideas for sparking change in neighborhoods, and raising the awareness of both problems and solutions using the G3 Watershed Wise Landscape model.
TreePeople’s Andy Lipkis
This third annual conference was the first to host a large delegation from the Los Angeles area, including Andy Lipkis and Edith de Guzman of TreePeople, Eileen Alduenda of Council for Watershed Health, Paul Herzog of Sufrider Foundation’s Ocean Friendly Gardens Program, and Bill DePoto, formerly of LA County, and now on the board of North East Trees.
Brad Lancaster
Brad Lancaster, rainwater harvesting’s inspirational common-sense-talking guru, whet the attendee’s appetite to tour his transformed street in the Dunbar Spring section of the city, a true Mecca for Low Impact Design (LID).
No week spent in Tucson studying Green Infrastructure would be complete without a trek (and at an hour’s worth of travel outside the city center, it is indeed a trek) to the Biosphere2, passes courtesy of Mitchell Pavao-Zuckerman, a nematode-loving professor (our kind of guy) at University of Arizona.
Biosphere Explorers Paul, Edith & Jolly
