Coastal fog or a marine layer are such common weather patterns in our area that over the years, many local people interested in innovative water sources have investigated collecting and using fog, especially during our typical 9-month dry season.

The fog catcher project just outside of Lima, Peru is a particularly inspiring story. Lima has a unique climate- rainfall is extremely low – less than 2 inches annually – but humidity can reach 98%.

Dry Farming is a term used to describe growing food crops without modern irrigation, that is, using only or mostly the rain that falls from the sky in a given area. It was the typcial way of farming for most of the history of agriculture.

Flume is a Smart Home Water System that can help you manage, monitor and conserve water use. It uses a water meter attachment and smartphone app. it's easy to install and is accurate to 99.9%. All you do is strap it on the side of your meter, connect it via your home Wi-Fi to the plug-in Bridge device, and it feeds you real-time information on how much water you're using, or losing to leaks, in your home. It takes 10-15 minutes to install, without needing any special skills.

Plants have different irrigation requirements at different times of the year. Weather and length of days also make a difference. We have just come through the highest water requirement period, July and August- sometimes this extends into September if weather stays hot. This year it certainly did!

Sweetwater Collaborative sponsored a series of Drought Forums in summer and fall 2014. In preparing for our Drought  Policy Forum, we researched and wrote a preliminary report--Exploring Our Options: Santa Barbara Communities Collaborative Water Resources Stewardship for Drought and Beyond.

We collaborated with environmental educators, landscape professionals, policy advisors, government workers, and non-profit leaders to ask important questions about practical drought adaptation and long-term water system alternatives, including desal.

Below please find our key findings.

Here in Santa Barbara in 2021, we have just been through the rainy season that almost wasn’t. We got a few good downpours and that was about it. Many plants that are usually nourished by the winter rains really didn’t get any significant watering. Soils didn’t get a deep soak to help plants survive without extra irrigation in the spring months. What’s a caring water wise person to do?

Mulch is a great ground covering that reduces weed growth and retains water in soil. Mulch can be used around trees and on paths, and helps stop erosion on slopes too. I cannot emphasize how often mulch is the solution to so many problems in a garden.

A Mediterranean climate has mild, wet winters and warm to hot, dry summers. It is generally agreed that this climate occurs in six distinct areas in the world, although true Mediterranean climate regions only occupy about 3 percent of the land area of the world. More than half of the total Mediterranean-climate regions on earth occur on the Mediterranean Sea. These include:

Most of us have heard of “THE water cycle”- how water circulates continually between the earth and the atmosphere by a cycle of precipitation, infiltration/ drainage and evaporation and transpiration.

A “small water cycle” does the same thing, but within each watershed. In these small cycles, water that falls within a watershed sticks around and comes back to earth in the form of rain, dew, mist and fog. Keeping our water local- within our small water cycles- and teaching others how to also do so- is one of Sweetwater’s objectives.

I took my grandkids to the Moxi Museum the other day, and we were all excited to get up to the roof to see the Whitewater exhibit. Kids and others can play and experiment with fluid dynamics in a spectacular way there- it’s a fully interactive water feature that includes a giant Archimedes screw. This method of moving water was invented in the 3rd century BC by Archimedes, a mathematician and inventor from ancient Greece. Archimedes lived in Syracuse, Sicily (now Italy). The Archimedes screw is a screw-shaped machine or hydraulic screw that raises water from a lower to a higher level. An Archimedes screw can range in size from a quarter of an inch to twelve feet in diameter.

Typical climate change policy follows a single narrative - “Climate change is global warming caused by too much carbon in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels. We stop climate change by making the transition to renewable energy.” Although this is a key aspect of the story, and is making a huge difference in the preventing and mitigating climate change, it is not the whole picture.

What is a Watershed? It’s the land that water flows across or under on its way to a stream, river, lake, or the ocean.

The City of Santa Barbara’s four main watersheds run north/south from the top of the Santa Ynez Mountains, down through Los Padres National Forest, through county areas and the city, and out to the beaches and ocean.