Silicon Valley Responds to the Drought Awards to Honor Water Conservation Champions

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1 NEWS RELEASE Contact: Peter Drekmeier March 3, 2016 (415) Silicon Valley Responds to the Drought Awards to Honor Water Conservation Champions Last year Silicon Valley reduced its water use by 26% from the 2013 baseline, saving nearly 40 billion gallons of water enough to fill 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. The Silicon Valley Water Conservation Awards highlight government agencies, businesses, organizations and individuals that have gone above and beyond the call of duty to save our most precious natural resource water. The winners will be acknowledged at an awards ceremony hosted by Google on March 23. It will be preceded by a vegetarian food expo, and followed by a tasting of beer made from advance-treated recycled water hosted by the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company. Details can be found at And the winners are: Business: Bay Maples Wild California Gardens Water Utility: City of Menlo Park Government Agency: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Gachina Landscape Management Organization: Palo Alto Unified School District Greenscape Management: City of South San Francisco Innovation: znano Education: ZunZun Water Champion: Elias Nacif Youth/Student: Andrew Jacobs Lifetime Achievement: Trish Mulvey About the Winners Bay Maples Wild California Gardens (Business) Bay Maples is a sustainable landscaping company located in San Jose. Last year they converted 22,000 square feet of grass to climate-appropriate landscapes, and installed 16 greywater systems and five

2 rainwater catchment systems. Bay Maples also hosted more than 30 workshops on rainwater catchment, greywater installations, rain gardens, composting and aquaponics. They donated and installed water-smart gardens at Booksin Elementary School in San Jose and the Common Ground Community Garden in Palo Alto. Owner Alan Hackler converted his home into a demonstration house, showcasing San Jose s first permitted rainwater catchment system used for indoor plumbing, and several greywater systems, including one that uses rainwater to wash clothes and then irrigate the landscape. He also worked with the City of San Jose and Santa Clara County to get a code variance to install a kitchen sink greywater system. The front yard is xeriscaped with all native plants, and features a 600-gallon rain tank and rain garden. An abandoned lot next door was converted into a water-wise community garden where public workshops and garden tours take place. Contact: Alan Hackler, (408) City of Menlo Park (Water Utility) Since the Governor s water conservation mandate kicked in last June, Menlo Park has registered the highest cumulative water savings in the State at 47%, exceeding its 16% Conservation Standard by 31%. Through its Lawn Be Gone program, the City rebates up to $2 per square foot for projects that convert lawns to drought-tolerant landscaping. This year the program has already converted 112,958 square feet of lawn. Residents and businesses have partnered with the City to save more than 5 million gallons annually. In 2013, Menlo Park developed a Conserve- A-Scape program that provides on-site design consultation with a professional landscape architect, a customized drought-tolerant garden design and customized plant and supply lists. The value of this service is $400, however, residents are only required to pay $50, with the remainder covered by the City. Menlo Park also funds Waterfluence, an automated water use and water budget indicator that allows the City s top 101 water users to see their water usage over time and compare it to their water budget. Waterfluence also provides on-site water audits and information about the City s water conservation programs. Contact: Heather Abrams, (650) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (Government Agency) and Gachina Landscape Management SLAC captures and reuses water whenever possible. Rainwater is collected around electrical equipment, storage tanks and others structures, and then processed through a non-hazardous water treatment unit and reused in cooling operations. Clean wastewater from construction projects and pipe testing also is being collected and filtered for use in cooling towers or for landscape irrigation. Working with Gachina Landscape Management, and with support from the City of Menlo Park s Lawn Be Gone program, SLAC replaced 20,000 square feet of lawn with drought resistant landscaping and drip irrigation. As a result of their actions, SLAC has saved 15 million gallons of potable water over the past two years despite an 11% increase in electricity usage and related cooling demands. Indoor water use was reduced by 23% and potable irrigation water by 80%. Contact: Rohendra Atapattu (SLAC), (650) ; Chad Sutton (Gachina), (650)

3 Palo Alto Unified School District (Organization) In response to the drought, PAUSD launched a program to convert non-athletic irrigated turf grass to native plant gardens and natural meadow areas. So far six schools have participated in the program, and the District plans to expand it into more of its remaining 13 sites. In total, these projects have removed more than 20,000 square feet of turf from PAUSD sites. The District also adopted an Integrated Pest Management approach to keeping the plants alive and healthy without the use of toxic pesticides. Through matching rebate programs administered by the Santa Clara Valley Water District and City of Palo Alto Utilities, the turf conversions have generated more than $42,000 in water saving rebates, which go back into the schools general budgets. Additionally, the District has performed indoor and outdoor water use surveys at all school sites and retrofitted or replaced hundreds of fixtures, including toilets, urinals, showerheads, aerators and irrigation hardware for maximum water use efficiency. Using 2013 as a baseline for comparison, the District has reduced its water consumption by 29%. Contact: Rebecca Navarro, (650) City of South San Francisco (Greenscape Management) Over the past two years the City of South San Francisco has taken stringent measures to reduce water use at city-maintained landscapes and public facilities, resulting in a 57% reduction in municipal water use since The City discontinued irrigation in turfed medians and for established shrubs and groundcovers, replaced water-intensive landscapes, installed bioswales to allow rainwater to seep back into the ground and expanded the use of mulch to conserve soil moisture. The City also partnered with the Bay-Friendly Landscaping & Gardening Coalition to train Parks Division staff, totaling 27 supervisory and maintenance personnel, in an intensive, four-session training program. The course focused on storm water management, soil health, irrigation, plant care, integrated pest management and tree care. 33 landscape professionals from other public agencies, as well as private sector commercial landscape companies, also participated. Contact: Samantha Haimovitch, (650) znano (Innovation) znano has developed small, on-site advanced water recycling plants that treat greywater using a seven step process that concludes with reverse osmosis and ultra violet disinfection. They currently have two systems in operation, and a third being installed in San Jose. The systems in operation recycle >70% of the wastewater they treat. The Santa Clara Valley Water District measured the water savings resulting from their system installed at a Gilroy laundromat. When fully operational, the San Jose plant is projected to save approximately 7,200 gallon per day. All three systems are designed for laundry water recycling, but the technology is expected to be equally effective for carwashes, breweries and wineries, food and beverage facilities, hotels and hospitals. Reverse osmosis removes sulfates and other ph adjusters from greywater, resulting in recycled water that achieves the desired ph for laundry with just 10% of the detergent required for tap water. The temperature of the treated water averages 83 degrees Fahrenheit, resulting in an energy savings of 11 degrees when reused. znano has invested in a production facility in San Jose that is designed to employ up to 32 people and produce up to 10 units per month by Contact: Adrian Brozell, (408)

4 ZunZun (Education) Now in its 20 th year, ZunZun is a husband and wife musical duo that presents water education assembly programs to K-8 schools throughout Silicon Valley and the greater Bay Area. Programs are bilingual, multicultural and incorporate high levels of audience participation to teach about water conservation and watershed protection. Using music, movement, instruments from around the world and lots of humor, ZunZun covers topics like leaky faucets and toilets, droughts, native plant gardens, storm drain pollution, sources of water and simple ways to save water at school and at home. ZunZun also creates parent newsletters and follow-up activities for students to continue their water education at home and back in the classroom. Activities have included take home CDs and DVDs, packs of water cards, drought tolerant native seed packets and posters. ZunZun currently reaches about 100,000 audience members per year (approximately 35,000 in Silicon Valley), and will give 250 performances this year alone. They have reached more than 1 million children over the past 20 years. Videos are available at Contact: Gwynne Cropsey, (831) Elias Nacif (Water Champion) Elias Nacif grew up participating in Boy Scouts, where he developed a deep appreciation of nature. Since 2007 he has worked for Service by Medallion, a large janitorial and maintenance provider serving more than 200 clients and cleaning over 30 million square feet of real estate nightly. Elias rolled out Medallion s Green Initiative to improve sustainability practices, both internally and externally. He created a water conservation checklist for clients that provides an inventory of potential water saving opportunities and a return on investment for each product, including toilet and urinal fixtures, stand-alone flushometers, water faucets and cleaning agents and equipment. A change-out to low-flow faucet aerators has been saving over one million gallons of water per year at some client sites. At Medallion, Elias introduced a Chemical Management System that consistently provides the correct dilution for cleaning products, decreasing water use, chemical exposure and plastic bottles in the waste stream. Medallion also switched to using microfiber cloths that require minimal chemical/water dilution, the Hygen Clean mop bucket system with an integrated water filter that generates cleaner water, and an exterior auto scrubber to replace power washing of debris that uses recycled water and uses only 270 gallons per day versus 1,050 gallons per day with standard equipment. The use of this technology is helping one client save over 125,000 gallons of fresh water per year. Contact: Elias Nacif, (650) Andrew Jacobs (Youth/Student) Andrew is a senior at Stanford University, where he has been a leader in water conservation since his freshman year when he joined Students for a Sustainable Stanford. That year he helped develop the Stanford Water App, which allowed people to notify the appropriate party on campus about a broken sprinkler, shower leak or other water waste. As a sophomore, Andrew facilitated the installation of a 1,500-gallon rainwater harvesting system and drip irrigation at Synergy House, a cooperative with an extensive garden network. He also led an effort to install a water bottle filling station in Stanford s Old Union, reducing the use of plastic bottles that take twice as much water to produce as they hold. Andrew recently led a pilot project in which an aqueous ozone cleaning solution was used to replace caustic chemical

5 cleaners. It saves water by not requiring a rinse after use. After killing bacteria, the product breaks down into water and oxygen. Andrew presented his findings to the housing directors, and funds are now set aside to implement the cleaning system in every residence hall across campus. Contact: Andrew Jacobs, (310) Trish Mulvey (Lifetime Achievement) Trish has been a water champion for decades. Her activities span a broad range of water-related topics, including groundwater management, water reuse, water efficient landscapes and rainwater capture. Trish s top concern is watershed health, and her work underscores the complex interconnections between water supply, healthy creeks, stable aquifers and robust wetlands. One of her earliest efforts was to organize the CLEAN South Bay Coalition, pulling together dozens of regional environmental groups and hundreds of citizen activists to support Communities for a Better Environment s litigation naming a local wastewater treatment plant as polluting the South Bay by discharging heavy metals originating from Silicon Valley plating and manufacturing facilities. Ultimately, the suit was settled, leading to the creation of the Silicon Valley Pollution Prevention Center and a focus on cost-effective source control solutions. Trish is an avid supporter of recycled water, and helped secure $16 million for a pipeline project from the Palo Alto wastewater treatment plant to Mountain View. Recently, she has advocated for a Groundwater Management Plan for the San Francisquito Cone and has supported East Palo Alto s Groundwater Management Plan. Contact: Trish Mulvey, (650) About the Water Conservation Awards Coalition The Coalition coordinating the Silicon Valley Water Conservation Awards includes: Acterra, Bay Area Water Supply & Conservation Agency, City of Palo Alto Utilities, GreenTown Los Altos, Joint Venture Silicon Valley, Santa Clara Valley Water District, Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter, Silicon Valley Leadership Group, Sustainable San Mateo County, Sustainable Silicon Valley and Tuolumne River Trust. Silicon Valley is defined as San Mateo County, Santa Clara County and Alameda County from Hayward south. The awards program was established in 2009.