Orange County Branch Newsletter

August 2008

Secretary's Column

LID by Example

By Ziad Y. Mazboudi, PE


If you’re wondering if I have a typo above, I don’t, it should be Lead by example, but this LID is for Low Impact Development.  I recently applied (on behalf of the city of San Juan Capistrano) with several of South Orange County cities for a grant with the goal of reducing urban runoff.  I could have done a retrofit to a park or a simple other project, but I wanted to do a demonstration project that would help me educate the public at large and developers on what can be done.  As a manager of the environmental division, one of my most important roles is public education.  My first thought was our city hall, a lot of grass, old irrigation system, not a great drainage system, so plenty of opportunities. The grant wasn’t for much, so I needed some funding and since this project was not a budgeted project, I turned to local partners.  Well, I was very successful, as I was able to bring in more than $100K in sponsorship.  Pretty good in a bad economic year.  I also formed an internal team to assist me, and am lucky to have outstanding colleagues.  My team was formed of a planner who is a landscape architect, a water division engineer, a water conservation and native plant specialist and a parks manager.  Each one of my team brought their knowledge and experience to the table.  I also needed the blessing and assistance of our planning commission, so I invited 2 of our planning commissioners to participate in the design, and one of them has a landscaping architecture firm, so we tapped into his company (NUVIS) as a resource to develop the landscape plans(part of the sponsorship).  We had many meetings over several months to agree on the plant pallets, mostly California native and other drought tolerant plants.  As an LID, I needed to incorporate infiltration features.  So, we incorporated 2 dry creek beds, we removed existing concrete sidewalks and replaced them with rubberized bricks that allows infiltration.  We also proposed to remove almost all the existing lawn, except for a small patch, and replaced it with synthetic turf, decomposed granite and native plants.  Once we had the landscape plans completed, we needed an irrigation plan, so I found another landscape architectural firm to develop them (HRP Studio).  The irrigation plans were developed and included 2 smart timers.  In order for me to be able to promote native plants to the public, I partnered with local nurseries and growers and obtained all the plants locally. 

City hall has turned into a great demonstration project, where we can show that we do what we preach, and we can show that one can plant native plants that actually bloom beautifully and reduce irrigation, reduce impervious surfaces, conserve water and improve water quality. 

In addition to the water quality features, the project included the recycling of 900 rubber tires used in the rubberized bricks.  Benches and picnic tables are made of recycled plastic.  We built a pedestrian bridge made of recycled plastic lumber, TREX.  We have a small water feature operated with solar operated motor. 

In addition to the outdoor features that we have incorporated in the city hall complex are waterless urinals and a total energy efficient lighting retrofit.  This retrofit included installation of motion sensors in conference rooms and restrooms, and replacement of the old electro-magnetic ballasts with electronic ones that are very energy efficient.  The energy retrofit was mostly covered by a grant from SDG&E.  We painted the inside of city hall with zero VOC paint.

Our city hall project is a small sample of the LID techniques and green building applications that I hope neighboring cities or engineers would appreciate and use as an example as opportunities arise. 

I will be preparing in the near future a white paper on the project, and would be more than happy to share it with anyone interested.  If you would like a copy of the project white paper, please e-mail at ocascesecretary@gmail.com

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