Feature

Earth Day issue Let’s Talk About Lawns

When it comes to water-saving techniques in the backyard landscape, Central Oregonians have options

By Nicole Vulcan

Redmond resident Jess Joseph stands in the middle of her backyard transition from water-sucking grass to a more natural landscape.

Two years ago, Jess Joseph bought her Redmond home—a quarter-acre plot with what she calls a “blank canvas” out back. This spring, where there were once patches of grass and weeds, that blank canvas has been tilled up in prep for its new life as a series of paths, gravel, trees, native plants and beneficial groundcovers. Like many Central Oregonians, Joseph sees grass as an unnecessary water hog that saps money from her pocketbook, along with precious water in a region plagued by extreme drought.

“I watered it for almost a year and I kind of gave up on it, thinking, this is ridiculous. Why am I out here wasting all this water on something that I am not using?” Joseph told the Source. “I think my bill in the summertime was about $75 more a month.”

As Jack Harvel’s accompanying article in this issue details, municipal water use accounts for just 2% of water use in Deschutes County—but people like Joseph know that every drop counts. Traditional grass lawns, covering some 50 million acres of U.S. land, use up some three trillion—with a T—gallons of water per year, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Grass lawns also require some 200 million gallons of gas for the mowing and 70 million pounds of pesticides to kill things other than grass, which depletes the soil and stops it from sequestering carbon, as an article in “Popular Science” detailed in 2021. Grass lawns also do nothing for the pollinating insects that are crucial in helping humans maintain their food supply.

That doesn’t mean that a green lawn has to be totally out of the question, however. In Redmond, Joseph is encouraging clover to grow in her front lawn, which is more drought-resistant, doesn’t require intensive fertilization and requires far less water to maintain.

“There are some really gorgeous groundcovers out there that are just as soft, just as pretty, but don’t use up near the water,” Joseph said. “It will have to be watered, but it’s like once a week rather than once every other day.”

The NRDC advocates for other “no mow” techniques, including leaving lawns to grow wild, planting less-resource-intensive varieties adapted for a particular climate, planting native plants or even entirely replacing grass with edibles, which can benefit pollinators as well as providing local food for the people growing it—food that doesn’t require trucks and trains to get to one’s table.

Courtesy SynLawn

Let’s talk about fake grass

There’s yet another option for the green-lawn lover: synthetic. While it won’t benefit insects, a synthetic lawn doesn’t require any water to maintain its pristine green look. It can be pressure sprayed to clean off pet droppings or debris, and when properly installed, can last for over a decade.

Barry Simpson, owner of SynLawn of Central Oregon, says his work life used to entail a mixture of other types of landscaping tasks—but these days, with growing interest in the product, installing synthetic lawns is all his business does. Simpson warrantees his synthetic lawns for 15 years.

Now in his 13th year, he said his customers tend to choose synthetic lawns for one of three reasons: first, water conservation, followed by easy maintenance and, in pet-loving Central Oregon, the ease of caring for a lawn that might get otherwise destroyed by pet urine and pet activity.

“People are becoming more aware of the increase with water usage and the cost of it steadily increasing,” Simpson said.

The turf is hypoallergenic and anti-microbial, and since it won’t require resource-hogging mowers or chemical-heavy treatments to keep it green, it can help a building owner gain points toward a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Reduce, Reuse, Rebate: The Three R’s of Urban Water Conservation

As Central Oregon cities become more water resilient, they follow a path laid by similarly arid communities in the American Southwest

By Jack Harvel

Central Oregon is facing one of the most severe droughts on record, and people are rightly worried about water as climate change, population growth and the loss of wildlife habitat stress the already-delicate balance of water use in the high desert. Municipal water accounts for about 2% of overall water rights in the Deschutes Basin — irrigation districts are 86% and instream 12% of rights in the basin — but cities are still working to encourage water conservation.

Bend added about 25,000 people between 2010 and 2020 without increasing the amount of water use, according to Bend’s Water Conservation Program Manager Dan Denning. There are several reasons for that, he says, like fully metering every drop of water a building uses, mandating irrigation only happen every other night and educating people on best practices for water use.

“When a drought declaration comes from the Governor, I would say we heighten our messages as a conservation program,” Denning said. “That’s basically saying, ‘OK, it’s irrigation season again. Here’s the status of the basin. We’re in an extreme drought again; we’re expecting that declaration to come soon. Here’s what we’re asking of our customers.”

The conservation department asks a bit more from customers during drought years. It requests customers prioritize plants to water, consider delaying planting something new and to make sure irrigation systems are running as planned. The City of Bend will help people out with some of this, like with a free sprinkler inspection program that opens up in June, automized leak notifications and putting people in touch with resources.

“If we get a code violation, we go out and try to work with the customer to help put them in touch with a contractor or the right resources to remedy the problem,” Denning said. “We tried to avoid leading with a stick, because fining someone who can’t get a contractor there in time to make the repair doesn’t really help them.”

Water use varies seasonally, with most of municipal water being used in the summer for outdoor uses like gardening and landscaping. Redmond’s Water Utilities Manager Josh Wedding has the ambitious goal to cut summer water use by 50%.

“Through the winter, late fall and early spring, this town thrives on an average daily demand of about 2.6 to 2.7 million gallons a day. We run breweries, grocery stores, businesses, houses, and everything just works really smooth,” said Wedding. “Then we go into the irrigation season, and the demand for town jumps dramatically. Last year we saw demands close to 16 million gallons a day. That’s roughly six times the amount.”

Cutting peak water use to 8 million gallons is a big task and starts with some easy fixes like getting water-efficient fixtures into homes—but the real obstacle is outdoor use. Wedding said he wants to reduce what he calls nonfunctional green space—that is, grassy areas that exist only for aesthetic purposes, like road medians and the area between sidewalks and streets. For individuals, Redmond can advocate that customers redesign yards for more efficient water use, but Wedding believes incentivizing it in development codes could provide more immediate relief.

“If a developer comes in and says, ‘Hey, I would love to build a new subdivision,’ I’d say, ‘OK, fine, we’ll allow you to build this new subdivision, but we want you to limit your irrigable space by 50%,’” Wedding says. “Encouraging more xeriscaping at a development level, and less greenspace at a development level, then right off the bat we get water savings without a lot of effort.”

As the population grows and Central Oregon must stretch its water further, it’s growing to resemble Southwestern cities that have been dealing with water shortages for 50 years. Tucson, Arizona’s 2018-2019 conservation report found that the city used the same amount of water as it did in 1985, despite its population rising by over 30%.

In the mid-1970s Tucson struggled to pump enough groundwater to meet peak summer demand. Since then, it’s implemented the things Central Oregon is either exploring or recently introduced. Xeriscaping is mandated in all new developments per Tucson’s code. Rebate programs reimburse customers for upgrading water systems. And reclaimed wastewater makes up about 10% of the city’s total water use.

But Bend is not Tucson, and there are a few ways the two cities differ in approach. Tucson bills customers on a tiered basis, hiking prices for the heaviest users. Its rebates extend to rainwater capture, which is less feasible in Central Oregon where heavy snowstorms can strip gutter systems off buildings, according to Wedding.

But as Central Oregon expands, it could more closely fall in line with Tucson, with more xeriscaped lawns, weather-adjusted irrigation systems and maybe an occasional rainwater collection system. Until then, the sky isn’t falling. The 2020 Integrated Water Systems Master Plan, a document that detailed steps Bend must take to maintain reliable drinking water, found that if Central Oregon continues its trend of conserving more water, then there will be enough supply even with growth, though it doesn’t account for short-term variables.

“Like a drought,” Denning said as an example of those short-term variables. “Within that 20 years, you still may have an event that causes you to have a curtailment event, or we might ask the residents or the community to say, we need you to reduce water use by 10-20% this summer, or we may say only outdoor watering three days a week.”

Local irrigation districts are also striving to conserve more water as low reservoir levels have led to some of the district’s shortest irrigation seasons in recent memory. All eight districts are piping some of the open canals and lining others to reduce evaporation and seepage.

A local farmer switches from hay to lavender to adapt to the increasingly scarce water supply

By Jack Harvel

12 In 2019 Marv Wodtli transitioned his 10-acre farm away from hay, a crop he’d grown on the family plot of land / BEND’S INDEPENDENT VOICE since he was a child. Wodtli owned a floor covering store, Floor Decor, for over 30 years as his main job but still farmed on the side. He started growing lavender after researching crops that can grow well in dry climates and be profitable on small plots of land. “There’s no way you could make a livAPRIL 21, 2022 / ing off of hay. I think my best hay year might have made $12,000. In today’s economy I don’t see $12,000 paying the bills,” Wodtli said. Arnold Irrigation, one of the more WWW.BENDSOURCE.COM junior water right holders in the Deschutes Basin, supplies water to the farm, and the recent short irrigation seasons didn’t lend itself to raising hay. “With water issues and how we keep on getting less and less, I started looking at different types of crops that didn’t use as much water. I use about 90% less water growing lavender with my drip system than I would growing hay,” Wodtli said. “We had to find something that would grow well in our climate. We’ve got to have right type of soil. It’s very water conservative. And another big thing is, deer don’t like it. So it hit a lot of the key things for our climate to grow.”

The water drip system had to be completely retooled to farm lavender. Rather than a sprinkler system that coats the entire ground with water, Wodtli’s farm is on a drip system that waters each individual plant with filtered water. The system’s proved to be more efficient with the water Wodtli’s allocated.

“We get shut off water last year on the first of July. So, I have created a storage pond that when full I can keep our plants alive and growing for three months before we run out of water,” he said.

There’s been a learning curve since 2019. Wodtli said one would be surprised how many weeds can grow in the 4-inch hole, and hand-weeding everything can be a time-consuming challenge. It’s something he’s gotten more adept at handling each season. One thing that’s still causing trouble is gophers, which burrow under the plant to get water from the drip lines.

Wodtli and his wife April originally farmed lavender as a commodity to be sold in bulk to processors, but once bulk prices dropped from about $2,000 a gallon of oil to $1,000, he moved toward direct sale of essential oils, a product used for massage, aromatherapy and skin care. The company is named 2nd Life Lavender, alluding to Wodtli’s second go in an industry after getting out of flooring. Since February 2021 they’ve been offering direct sales to customers.

“I ended up pivoting because, with the bulk prices dropping so much, we want to make a living at it,” he said. “What we’d really like to do is get more massage therapists, aromatherapists—get these people using it, and selling it. Because one, it’ll be cheaper for them. And two, we’re selling our product to people that will appreciate the purity of it.”

The purity, he says, is in that the processing doesn’t cut the product with other ingredients, that it’s processed with purified water the same day its harvested and that the lavender never touches the ground. The operation’s been growing in scale each year.

“The first year we got 19 gallons, last year we got 45 gallons and this year we should be hitting 60 to 70 gallons,” Wodtli said. “Once they get fully mature, we should be at about 100 gallons.”

Courtesy of 2nd Life Lavender

Farmer Marv Wodtli harvests a past crop of lavender.

CENTRAL OREGON CERTIFIED PREMIER INSTALLER

Perfect for lawns and pets

Residents and local governments explore adding native plants for wildlife and pollinator habitat

By Damian Fagan

With bipartisan support, the U.S. Senate has proclaimed April to be National Native Plant Month under Senate Resolution 570. The designation “… recognizes the benefits of native plants to the environment and economy of the United States.”

With Earth Day on the horizon, perhaps it’s a good time to review our interest in native plant gardening.

“From an aesthetic standpoint, when maintained properly, I think native landscapes can be exceptionally pretty, and not only that, they foster a sense of place,” said Andria Truax, owner of Great Basin Nursery. “I think as more of these landscapes are woven into the urban fabric they’ll start to snowball and native and/or drought-tolerant will become the norm.”

Truax primarily sells plants wholesale from her nursery, but during June and July, gardeners can purchase plants at the Northwest Crossing Saturday market and through occasional open houses. Wintercreek Nursey, located near Great Basin Nursery on Deschutes Market Road, is another nursery open to the public for purchasing native plants.

Truax encourages folks who are interested in native plants to observe and learn about wildflowers and shrubs during their outdoor explorations. “Pay attention to where the plants are growing, and from there you can extrapolate what conditions they will thrive in in the home landscape.” Many nurseries and local landscapers, such as Your Garden Companion, can also be of help to homeowners.

“In order to sell native plants, you have to change people’s thinking,” said Yvonne Babb, owner of Your Garden Companion. Babb looks at the natural plant communities in a ponderosa pine forest and believes that native shrubs, forbs and grasses can be the anchors for residential landscaping. “Our vision is to reinvigorate hope for the future by modeling successful sustainable strategies that restore health, function and beauty to urban and rural properties.”

As we tour her yard, Babb points out bitterbrush, chokecherry, wax currant and manzanita shrubs, and the benefits these native shrubs provide to wildlife. “Swallowtail butterfly larvae will chew on the leaves of chokecherry and then after it becomes an adult will return and feed on the nectar,” said Babb. In addition, the beautiful clusters of flowers produce berries that attract birds later in summer.

A great benefit of utilizing native plants in a garden is that native pollinators such as bees, beetles, flies, hummingbirds and other insects have adapted to the flower types for obtaining nectar or pollen. Globe mallow bees (Diadasia diminuata) have long hairs on their legs that collect pollen from globemallow flowers and carry it back to their nests. “You look at these beautiful orange flowers, which close up at night, and here’s a bee cradled like a baby in the blossom. You just get a bonus with the native plants,” added Babb.

On the public side, the City of Bend has been partnering with the Bend Pollinator Project to plant pollinator-friendly landscapes on city property.

“The goal of the Bend Pollinator Pathway in its first full year (2021) was to get as many native pollinator plants into the ground as possible,” said Basey Klopp, BPP coordinator. Volunteers, with the help of City staff, planted over 2,200 plants in public places such as Orchard Park, Al Moody Park, Laurel Pocket Park and other locations. A variety of shrubs and wildflowers, including wax currant, narrowleaf milkweed, sulphur-flowered buckwheat, shrubby penstemon and goldenrod, were planted to attract a wide diversity of pollinators throughout the growing season.

The group also provides resources on its website for homeowners to learn which native plants grow well in Central Oregon gardens and some best planting and maintenance practices for creating a pollinator habitat. These include planting key tree species for adults and larvae, providing soft landing areas such as understory plants or leaf litter for larvae and delaying spring cleaning so that overwintering insects have a higher survival success rate. “Mother Nature doesn’t ‘clean up’ wildlands in the spring and you’ll find the most beautiful butterflies on her land,” added Klopp. Visit the BPP’s Facebook page for volunteer opportunities, workshops and native plant news.

So as the snow melts and the temperatures rise, start planning and consulting with experts on transforming your garden into a wildlife sanctuary. The pollinators will thank you later.

Damian Fagan

Swallowtail butterflies visit showy milkweed flowers in a Bend backyard garden.

DOCTORS BYRON MAAS, TABITHA JOHNSTON, LAUREN HOFFMAN LAURA ACEVEDO COURTNEY MCLAUGHLAN AND BRIAN LOUDIS

National Native Plant Month

Learn more at nationalnativeplantmonth.org

CENTRAL OREGON

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Earth Day issue Turning Saltwater into Freshwater

OSU-Cascades professor Bahman Abbasi leads research to bring desalination systems to the masses, along with efforts to decontaminate fracking wastewater and process the brines for lithium-ion batteries

By Hanna Merzbach

On a planet where 70% of the area is covered by water, only 3% of that is fresh water—and only a small fraction of that is available for drinking. More than 884 million people don’t have access to drinking water, and that number is only expected to grow as the planet warms.

But what if we could tap into the rest of that 70%?

That’s the question that fuels Assistant Professor Bahman Abbasi’s research at Oregon State University-Cascades—the largest research project on the campus. He and a diverse team of researchers are pioneering studies on desalination systems, creating a portable device that uses renewable energy, like solar or geothermal, to turn saltwater into drinking water.

Abbasi’s drive to combat water shortages is, in part, personal. He grew up in Iran, where water access was intermittent at best.

“I remember being a child and you had to fill up tubs of water when water was running, just in anticipation of water getting cut out,” he recalled.

Upon coming to the U.S. for school, he discovered one way to address water access issues that was being vastly overlooked: thermal desalination systems. Most widely used desalination systems rely on reverse osmosis, where a membrane is used to filter out the salt from the water. This process can be expensive and creates an ultra-salty water byproduct, which is often dumped back into oceans.

Abbasi’s system, on the other hand, avoids this process entirely. He instead uses low-grade heat sources, like solar, to separate the salt from the water. This process is a lot cheaper, he said, and it results in solid salts that can be sold for profit.

The goal? “Democratize desalination systems for the masses,” Abbasi said. Unlike current systems, Abbasi’s device will be transportable and ideally fit in a 20 foot-box—well-suited for refugee camps, war-torn villages and disaster sites. The system would allow communities to produce water from local bodies of water with local energy sources.

Abbasi’s team of about a dozen researchers comes from seven different countries across the globe. A whiteboard in the lab features quotes from their native languages—an attempt by Abbasi to cultivate an environment where civil society is respected among the researchers.

“They know about water shortage,” he said. “And my hope is after they graduate, or they finish their studies they can help us establish businesses in the U.S. and across the globe (to address water issues).”

Oftentimes, important research flourishes in labs but never sees the light of day. Abbasi’s team, however, is focused on implementation. In October 2020, Abbasi cofounded a company named “Espiku” (which means “white mountain” in a local Iranian dialect) to actually bring this technology to the market.

“That was when we decided our research was yielding the results that we hoped for,” Abbasi said. “Now we need to take a step forward.” Espiku’s water systems don’t stop with saltwater. Abbasi’s team is also researching a system that uses thermal energy to decontaminate the wastewater from hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” Currently, fracking wastewater can go into local water sources and have huge environmental costs for surrounding communities. With Espiku’s system, mining companies could process that water so it’s not toxic, and—while it still wouldn’t be clean enough for drinking or irrigation purposes—it would be safe to store on the surface or for other industrial uses.

“We introduce a cost-effective method for the companies to actually clean their wastewater,” Abbasi said.

While developing this solution for dealing with fracking wastewater, the team saw an opportunity to create another sister technology: a device that processes the salty brines for lithium-ion batteries, the rechargeable energy sources that fuel electric cars. The U.S. currently produces less than 2% of the world’s lithium supply. Abbasi’s system—still in the early research phase—aims to create more opportunities for processing lithium-rich brines domestically.

As the global market moves toward renewable energy, lithium production has been widely critiqued for its environmental impact. Using local heat sources, Abbasi’s system would be able to process the lithium brines quickly and with little environmental impact. The Espiku team is currently a semifinalist in a $4 million U.S. Department of Energy competition for companies developing green, economically viable ways to extract lithium brine. The team will find out in July if it makes it to the next round.

Over the years, the Department of Energy has been a huge funding source for Abbasi’s research, awarding the team over $5 million combined for its various projects. Funding also comes from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, the OSU Venture Development Lab and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

The systems for producing fresh water from saltwater and decontaminating wastewater are built and ready to start pilot phases, depending on available funding. The lithium-related system is still early in the research process. Although the team must jump through many hoops to fund its research and bring its technologies to the market, Abbasi’s vision remains clear, particularly when it comes to saltwater desalination. He imagines putting the system in a community home to refugees or war in East or West Africa.

“They finally have a reliable source of water from their local resources,” Abbasi said. “And I picture myself sitting there and watching that scene, and tell myself, ‘We’ve finally achieved it.’”

Courtesy of OSU-Cascades

Bahman Abbasi is an assistant professor at OSU-Cascades, where he runs the Water and Energies Technology lab.

Bahman Abbasi's team of researchers comes from seven different countries, many of which experience water shortages.

“I remember being a child and you had to fill up tubs of water when water was running, just in anticipation of water getting cut out.”

—BAHMAN ABBASI

Courtesy of OSU-Cascades