Land use and water policy are interconnected. You hear that a lot on the Land Use Report. This evening, at 7:30, the California Native Plant Society is sponsoring a lecture at the UCSC Arboretum Horticulture Building, and the focus of this lecture, when you get right down to it, is how individual property owners can take individual action to address our water supply crisis. The title of the lecture is, “From Lawns To Meadows.”

Alexandra Von Feldt, who will be making the presentation, is a professional native landscape gardener and designer, and she will provide some practical examples of how you could carry out what the Native Plant Society calls a “lawn conversion.” If you’d like to see some inspiring images of native plant gardens, see the link below.

Individual actions can change human realities to meet community and individual challenges, and to realize community, as well as individual, opportunities. If you’re a homeowner with a lawn, tonight’s presentation will provide some helpful suggestions on how you can do something individually to help conserve water.

Let’s never forget, though, that we can also meet community challenges, and realize our common opportunities, when we act together, and not just individually. That’s where policy choices, and may I also say “political” choices, make the difference.

More Information:

The 2010 “Going Native” Garden Tour
http://www.goingnativegardentour.org/GNGT/Home.html

Garden Images
http://www.goingnativegardentour.org/
gardens/gardenindex10.php

Individual actions add up. One political theory is that there is an “invisible hand” that ensures that all our selfishly motivated individual actions will result, ultimately, in the public good. The “public good,” in this concept, as most famously promoted by the economist Adam Smith, is simply the summing up of all our “individual goods.” It’s too bad that Adam Smith was “wrong.” It is demonstrably not true that the economic marketplace (which is the real name of the “invisible hand” that Adam Smith talked about) will transmogrify individual “self-interest” into the “public interest.” If we want to achieve what we decide is the “public interest,” we need to do it directly, getting together to formulate our public interest objectives, and then getting together to achieve them, in some collective, and ultimately “political,” way.

“Government” is the way we come together to make community decisions about what we want to do, and “government” is the way we mobilize our common resources to try to achieve our public interest, community goals. This means, as a matter of pure logic, that unless you think that the only thing that makes a difference is what you do, individually, you should find some way to get involved in community level decision making.

You could check out today’s Santa Cruz City Council meeting. Or even testify at the Council’s public comment period. It starts at 3:00 o’clock this afternoon.

More Information:

City of Santa Cruz Website
http://www.cityofsantacruz.com/

May 11, 2010 City Council Agenda
http://64.175.136.240/sirepub/meet.aspx

We need to act in some collective way to be successful in achieving our public policy goals, including public policy goals related to land use, transportation, or water supply. “Getting involved” in various community public policy activities is a good way to begin. Here’s a listing of three upcoming events that relate to important public policy problems:

• This evening, from 5:00 to 6:30, LandWatch Monterey County is sponsoring a talk by Hunter Harvath, the Assistant General Manager for Monterey-Salinas Transit. The focus will be on how Senate Bill 375 can stitch together land use policy and transportation policy. The meeting will be held in the Banquet Room at the Rio Grill, in the Crossroads Shopping Center in Carmel Valley.
  
  
• Thursday, from 7:00 to 9:30 p.m., Melissa Weaver will speak at the Saint Andrew Presbyterian Church, located at 9850 Monroe Avenue in Aptos. This is close to the Freedom Boulevard exit off of Highway One. Weaver is an environmental health consultant and educator, and will be talking about the environmental health impacts of wireless technology.
  
  
• Friday, the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments will be sponsoring a Community Planning Forum on “Water Efficiency.” The forum begins at 9:30 in the morning at the Moss Landing Marine Labs.

There is more information below.

More Information:

LandWatch Website
http://www.LandWatch.org

LandWatch Event Information – Contact Amy White at 831-422-9384, or by email:awhite@mclw.org

AMBAG Website
http://www.ambag.org/

AMBAG Event Information
http://www.ambag.org/events/index.html

Wireless Safety Website
http://www.emfsafetynetwork.org

Water use efficiency can essentially “create” more water. One possible way to deal with a water supply crisis, in other words, is to figure out how to use our existing water supplies more efficiently. If you are in the City of Santa Cruz Water Service Area, which includes not only the City of Santa Cruz, but also all of Live Oak, Pasatiempo, and parts of the City of Capitola and the North Coast, you should be aware that the City of Santa Cruz has taken the official position that water supply efficiency cannot solve the community’s current water supply crisis. “New” water will be needed, according to the City, and this means the construction of a very costly, major new desalination plant. I hope many listeners are starting to focus in on the policy debate that ought to be taking place about this idea. Pretty soon, that debate will be formalized through an official Environmental Impact Report process.

In the meantime, besides thinking about how you might convert your lawn to a “meadow,” as a way to help conserve scarce water supplies, you could also explore the idea of using the greywater you produce in your own home to take care of your outdoor watering needs. A “Laundry to Landscape” Workshop will be held this Saturday, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. There is a charge for the workshop, so it’s geared to those who are seriously interested, but some of you might be! There is more information below.

More Information:

Love’s Gardens Website
http://www.lovesgardens.com

The “Laundry to Landscape Greywater Workshop” is being presented by Love’s Gardens, which is in the business of helping to design and install greywater systems. To enroll ($45-$75 self sliding scale) contact Love’s Gardens at 831-471-9100 or by email atgoldenlove@lovesgardens.com.

Tomorrow, Saturday May 15th, you can take a tour of affordable housing sites in the City of San Jose, Milpitas, and Santa Clara. Tours like this can be truly eye opening. It turns out that affordable housing can be a community asset and community amenity, besides being vital for the economic and social health of our local communities.

On the transportation/land use front, the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments, or AMBAG, is holding a series of workshops intended to help develop what AMBAG calls a “2035 Regional Blueprint.” The first workshop will be held tomorrow, Saturday May 15th, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., in the Police Community Room, 155 Center Street, in Santa Cruz.

Workshop sessions are also scheduled for May 20th, next Thursday, at the Monterey Conference Center; May 24th, a Monday, at the YMCA in Soledad; May 27th, a Thursday, at the Salinas Community Center; June 2nd, a Wednesday, at the Watsonville Community Room; June 16th, a Wednesday, at the Veterans Memorial Building in Hollister; and on June 26th, Saturday, also at the Veterans Memorial Building in Hollister.

The idea of these workshops is to help formulate a “smart growth” vision for the future of the Monterey Bay Area. Get more information below.

More Information

The Affordable Housing Tour is sponsored by the Loma Prieta Chapter of the Sierra Club. Join the tour by coming to the Palm Court Senior Apartment, 1200 Lick Avenue, San Jose, at 8:00 a.m. on Saturday May 15th.

Loma Prieta Chapter Website
http://lomaprieta.sierraclub.org/

Affordable Housing Tour Announcement
http://lomaprieta.sierraclub.org/calendar.asp?eventid=1707

AMBAG Website
http://www.ambag.org/index.html

AMBAG’s Blueprint Planning Project - http://www.ambag.org/programs/blueprint/blueprint.html

For more information on the Blueprint Project contact Linda Meckel: 831-883-3750; Email lmeckel@ambag.org