#los angeles drought

In defense of Trees. 

Most people do not think of trees (excepting the odd palm) when they think of Los Angeles, and yet from our parks to our backyards, the monotony of  concrete is broken and graced by these special beings.

The drought of recent years has been brutal to our tree canopy.  Parks and Recs in Los Angeles County state that over 14,000 trees (over 4% of all trees in our parks) have died from drought this past year alone.  This figure excludes all trees within the county but not being counted by Parks and Recs. 

Aside from being grounding and beautifying forces of good, trees gift us with the quite practical contributions of shade, water capture, and temperature reduction while the all while offering a significant absorption of Co2.

Trees are suffering in an unprecedented way as many Angelenos are removing their lawns and taking advantage of our local utility company’s “Cash in Your Lawn” program.  Mature residential trees are dying in droves as the lawn they had previously depended upon for their summer water has been removed, replaced by gravel. 

Low income neighborhoods have an especially rough road as they continue to suffer disproportionately: the tree canopy is far smaller throughout these to begin, and will only become smaller as water prices will force many to abandon their trees and gardens.

The Garden of Edendale been using gray water for over five years now, and in its function as a certified wildlife habitat, supports many mature trees on our ¼ acre of land.  The entire neighborhood is so canopied, houses are largely invisible in any google earth image.  However, not a day goes by without my seeing a delivery tractor swinging a huge bag of gravel off to another neighbor who is ripping out their plants and covering their yard in gravel. 

What kind of hellish landscape awaits us as we blindly remove all plants and kill off our trees in the process?

What will happen to all the critters…? The insects, birds, squirrels and migratory creatures as the southland increasingly becomes a barren concrete wasteland?

We need to think about what we are doing and how we choose to spend our resources.  We need to continue to think about what sort of world we are creating for ourselves and those who come after us.  We need to think about the plants and the animals and the natural world we are a part of.  We need to stop making hell.  We need to make Eden.

Drought tolerant and native landscaping coupled with gray water usage is clearly the answer, but one which largely seems to be eluding our city.

losttoy:

California is in its fourth year of one of the worst droughts in modern history, with recent reports showing only enough water to last the state one more year. Keep in mind that this is a state whose water fuels a major portion of our entire nation’s food supply. But while residents are urged to conserve water and are facing mandatory water usage restrictions, Nestlé is bottling this scarce resource straight from the heart of California’s drought, exporting it out of state, and selling it for profit. And this is all happening right under the state water regulator’s nose!

JOIN US to call on the California Water Resources Control Board to immediately shut down Nestlé’s bottling operations during this devastating drought!

I wonder if the state buys this back from Nestle to hand out to all the Central Valley residents who no longer have running water? 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/us/california-drought-tulare-county.html?_r=0

Please boost, sign the petition, don’t

salon:

It turns out that oil companies in California didn’t inject wastewater into of usable aquifers, with the state’s permission, hundreds of times — it was more like thousands.

We don’t even know what to say at this point.