Life after AB1881 – Who designs what and who signs off? Let’s educate our industry members

Hi local Landscape Professionals,

I hope I can generate your interest and solicit your help in a joint effort to educate and assist professionals from the landscape industry in our County navigate “life after AB1881”.    As you  may know, the Water Conservation Act of 2006 required all local governments to update their existing landscape ordinances to use water more efficiently.  The State Model Water Ordinance (AB1881) now required that water-consumers – counties and cities state-wide   (in our case the County of San Diego and its individual cities as customers of the SD County Water Authority;  there are about 24 of them)   either adopt the State Model Water Ordinance or create their own individual version. This created considerable uncertainty among the professionals:  What are these landscape ordinances, what are the elements that “trigger”  the “Landscape Documentation Package”?

Several members of  the local chapters of the CLCA San Diego Chapter, and APLD SoCal Association of Professional Landscape Designers have created a workgroup to address this issue.  (There are other noteworthy groups working in this area, such as CAC Conservation Action Commmitte of the Water Conservation Summit  -  please see   http://www.waterconservationsummit.com/WorkingGroups1.html )

Our work group thought that it would be helpful to develop a roster of the individual municipalities, their adopted ordinances (there is the State Landscape Ordinance, the Regional Model Landscape Ordinance, the County’s ordinance and then the Cities’ ordinances), and the names and contact info of the individual that checks our plans.  Janet Puzzuoli-Vallin of BelleTerre Landscape and I have volunteered to gather this information.

So our hope is that while you are at your local city’s counter for information or plan check you would inquire about the name, phone # and email address of the landscape plan checker and relay this info back to us;  if you could also let us know which version of the ordinance is applicable and what the triggers in this ordinance are (new and/or rehabilitated landscape, size of landscape, residential/new development/commercial etc.) , this would also advance our cause greatly and would be very much appreciated.  Janet and I will create the master list, and it will be posted and accessible to all of us.

If you have any questions, please let us know:  760-586-6065,  cholmquist@adnc.com &  Janet Puzzuoli-Vallin of BelleTerre Landscapes at 858- 487-9377 ,  belleterre01@aol.com

Here some additional info, such as some of the ordinances mentioned above:   http://www.waterconservationsummit.com/OrdinanceWorkGroup.html

Also, the County’s site with information as well as the text of the Ordinance and the County’s Design Manual:  http://www.sdcounty.ca.gov/dplu/Landscape-Ordinance_Design_Review_Manual.html