Trailer Park Water Fight

In a drought year like this, competition for water is getting fierce. This was in the Police Dispatch section of the local Tucson Weekly:

A dispute involving a man and a neighbor who said he was only trying to help the man with his rainwater-harvesting efforts ended with the neighbor getting bashed on the head with an empty garbage can, according to a Pima County Sheriff's Department report.
Deputies who were called to the scene interviewed the man, who said he collected rainwater runoff from the roof of his trailer in garbage cans. He said the neighbor came over, ostensibly to help him, but overturned one of the cans almost directly on top of him.
The neighbor said he had noticed a mud stain in one of the garbage cans and wanted to help by cleaning the can with a hose, but he accidentally sprayed the man with water. That's when the man picked up the empty garbage can and struck him, the neighbor said.
After a witness to the incident backed up the neighbor's story, the rainwater-collecting man was taken to jail on suspicion of assault with a garbage can.

Let's try to keep it civil out there people.

LA Board of Public Works calling for on-site rainwater retention

There has apparently been much talk of low-impact development (LID) standards in the Los Angeles area recently and now their public works board is calling for a new requirement that 100% of runoff from a 3/4 inch storm must be contained on-site on all new developments and some redevelopments. The plans are detailed in an LA Times article here.

Tucson has a rainwater harvesting ordinance that is aimed primarily at collecting rainwater to replace use of potable water for on-site landscape irrigation, but also has incidental effects of reducing off-drainage of stormwater. The LA proposal is strictly aimed at realization of benefits from reduced runoff.

In some respects, the LA proposal is much stricter than Tucson's ordinance because it requires containment of all water produced by a 3/4 inch rainstorm, while the Tucson ordinance requires using on-site generated rainwater for at least 50% of on-site landscaping irrigation. Tucson does have regulations about managing runoff generated by property development - and these have resulted in a few recent developments around town that manage stormwater on-site to avoid costly mitigation of runoff effects - but in most cases there is infrastructure in place to handle some or most runoff from developed property.

If LA successfully implements this change it could prove difficult to comply with. As the story notes, in some locations getting the runoff to infiltrate into the soil will be a real challenge. And a 3/4 inch rain might occur over 30 minutes or over 36 hours - with the amount of runoff generated varying greatly between the two. This definitely changes the type of development you do - how much of a lot is built on, use of underground parking (if storage of runoff is necessary) - it could get costly. As this is just a proposal at this point it will undoubtedly undergo some changes before implementation. But should be interesting to keep an eye on it.

h/t to Aquafornia for bringing the Times article to my attention.