NEW WATER CONSERVATION INITIATIVE PROTECTS SALMON & COMMUNITIES

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: JULY 15, 2008
CONTACT: Paola Bouley, Conservation Program Director, Salmon Protection and
Watershed Network. Tel: 415-663-8590 x102, Email: Paola [at] tirn.net

New Marin Community Water Conservation Initiative PROTECTS
AGAINST DROUGHT, FIGHTS GLOBAL WARMING and protects
salmon too.

The Salmon Protection and Watershed Network (SPAWN), with funding from the Marin
Community Foundation, has launched its Stormwater Catchment & Water Conservation
Initiative for Marin County residences and businesses.
The simple idea behind the program is to collect and store rainwater in the wet winter
months and use it for irrigating gardens, lawns and landscaping in the dry spring and
summer months.

SPAWN will use the $60,000 funds to educate, motivate and provide economic
incentives to residents and businesses who want to participate and is currently actively
signing participants up for the program.

"The program has multiple benefits for people, endangered salmon and the environment,
and the timing is extraordinary, considering the Governor has announced a State-wide
drought emergency," said Paola Bouley, Conservation Program Director for SPAWN.
She noted that the original proposal was drafted last year in the middle of a wet winter,
but with drought on everyone's mind, interest in the program is growing exponentially.

By using stored rainwater for irrigation, residents are conserving treated water for
important human needs such as drinking and washing, which becomes an ever more
critical resource during drought conditions. Onsite rainwater catchment systems also
reduces energy use. Bouley noted that the energy needed to move water from reservoirs
to treatment plants to households makes MMWD the largest user of electricity in the
County. "By reducing water use, we also help reduce our carbon footprint and fight
global warming." Finally, she noted, "Capturing stormwater and reducing peak run-off
from impermeable surfaces such as roofs also helps reduces downstream erosion of
creekbanks and sedimentation of salmon spawning beds." If the reasons weren't enough,
Bouley noted that having a onsite water storage on your property, carefully situated and
with properly fitted valves, can also be a benefit to firefighters during an emergency,
especially in the urban – wildland interface.

The focus on utilizing abundant stormwater runoff to meet part of our spring and summer
irrigation needs is an important conservation measure that reduces the ever-growing
demand for water, which in Marin County outstrips local supply by more than 25%
requiring imports from the Russian and Eel Rivers and fueling an MMWD proposal to
build an expensive and energy-intensive desalination plant in San Francisco Bay.
According to MMWD, currently 50% of the total water used in Marin during the summer
is used solely for irrigating lawns and gardens.

In 2006, with funding help from the EPA and State Water Resources Control Board,
SPAWN in partnership with the Lagunitas School built a demonstration roof stormwater
harvesting project. In an average rainfall year, a 1,600 sq. Ft. lunch-shelter roof on the
playground functions as an above ground well, capturing 30,000 gallons of pure
rainwater that is then stored in a cistern and used for irrigating the students organic
garden project. Left un-captured, the roof runoff would have drained onto a concrete
pad and into a 10-inch stormdrain that emptied directly into Larsen Creek, a stream
sensitive to erosion that is also home to endangered coho salmon.

The wild coho salmon and steelhead found in Marin represent the largest and 2nd largest
respective remaining runs of these fish in Central California. Stormwater runoff from
excessive impervious surfaces (roads, parking lots, thousands of roofs) erodes
streambanks causing siltation of key spawning grounds and combined with loss of
floodplain and riparian habitat, washes baby fish out to sea before they are ready to
migrate.

"Reducing stormwater runoff not only helps offset impacts on our salmon and
watersheds, but can also help decrease our dependence on unsustainable water imports
from the Russian and Eel Rivers and relieve pressure on local supplies from behind dams
on Lagunitas and Nicasio Creeks, said Bouley. She added, "People are hungry for
practical solutions to common sustainability issues. And with clean water supplies
becoming ever more strained in California, roofwater harvesting is just one of the
additional tools that needs to be included in our conservation "toolbox."

To sign up for this program or to learn more visit: http://spawnusa.org/pages/page-205,
call 415-663-8590 x102

MORE INFO: On July 31 from 7-9PM at the Women's Club in Fairfax, SPAWN
and Sustainable Fairfax will announce their respective new programs to help landowners
design and fund rainwater harvesting projects. Brock Dolman, Director of the WATER
Institute at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, who was featured in the recent
documentary the "11th Hour," will also lead a presentation on water catchment. $5-10
donation requested.