Apologies if this is more of a city council or water district question, but several cities and water districts in California have rebate programs for homeowners and landlords to replace their lawns with native plants or “California-friendly” plants that don’t require as much water or fertilizer, while also beautifying neighborhoods (which can help with traffic calming), provide food for pollinators, and ideally help with biodiversity.

Is this something you could see funding for in the fourth district and would you support it? For reference, Santa Rosa has a $1 per sq ft rebate while SoCal rebates tend to be higher. Thank you for your time!

— West Eureka, I've Found It!

Response

Natalie Arroyo

This is a great question! A coordinated approach between cities, the County of Humboldt including our agriculture department and natural resources staff, and Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District would be ideal for something like this. It is a bit hard to compare our community to Sonoma County or southern California when it comes to the cost of water and the ability to create a financial incentive like this, though, as our wholesale water rates are a magnitude less than the rates in those communities. This makes offering a cash incentive more difficult from a pure dollars-and-cents point of view. However, it’s worth exploring and I will do so!

Some additional strategies to encourage xeriscaping, native plant gardens, and other approaches to drought-resistant gardening for multiple benefits as you’ve described include educational opportunities for community members and outreach to nurseries about eliminating sales of highly invasive plants. 

On a somewhat related note, for many years I planted street trees throughout Eureka - trees near the front edge of people’s yards or in sidewalk holes where sidewalks are wide enough - and I learned a lot about the power of seeing good examples in the community. People were a little hesitant to pick California native trees and often preferred ornamentals because they were familiar, and they needed to see a real world example of a mature, native tree that was pruned up like a “decorative” tree and well-placed in its location. I do think it’s similar with gardens that have minimal turf - folks need to see a beautiful yard that they could imagine for themselves, learn about the plants, learn about the maintenance, et cetera. For this reason, native plant garden tours and people showcasing example gardens is a very powerful motivator! There have been some of these over the years, but it’s always good to see more of. 

As a Supervisor, sometimes my role is to simply connect people with good ideas to see what is possible, and that’s something I’ll do with this one. Feel free to email me at narroyo@co.humboldt.ca.us if you’d like to stay in the loop on this topic!

 

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