Assembly Bill 1881 Final Stretch

Before and After: The City of Long Beach’s drive, Beautiful Long Beach Landscapes Program, offers free makeovers which have cut Long Beach water use by 16.5 percent since fall 2007. The long-term plan is to convert as many of the city's 60,000 homes as possible from turf to native and drought-tolerant landscapes.

Cities and counties that have not yet implemented a water-efficient landscape ordinance in response to 2006's Assembly Bill 1881 are in the final stretch of the bill's rollout with a Jan. 1, 2010, deadline.

AB1881 attempts to improve an existing landscape ordinance originating from 1990's Assembly Bill 325. While hailed by planners and landscape architects as a significant step forward in water conservation, critics say AB325 missed the mark when it came to regulating residential landscapes and with general enforcement. ''What AB325 did was set into motion the procedure for creating California's first landscape water-efficient model ordinance,'' said Larry Rohlfes, assistant executive director of the California Landscape Contractors Association.

The California Department of Water Resources completed its model landscape ordinance, which was required by January of this year. Since then, the Office of Administrative Law sent the ordinance back to the DWR, revisions were made and a public comment period for those revisions closed in May.

Although the statewide ordinance has not yet been adopted, local agencies must decide to adopt either the DWR's ordinance or their own equally efficient version. All of this must be done by Jan. 1, 2010.

From the California Real Estate Journal