Article

Mark gave a great talk in Marina Del Rey last Thurs­day. Mark is pres­i­dent of Heal the Bay healthebay.org. He spoke on one of my favorite top­ics: Rain­wa­ter Har­vest­ing. The room was full of county and city offi­cials, and con­stituents. The com­mu­nity is tight amongst those types. By that I mean most of them seemed to know each other and share a his­tory together BUT, there may have been a new ‘energy’; a com­mon ground and a shared agenda this night. That agenda, from where I sat, is to focus on pol­icy to decen­tral­ize non point source pol­lu­tion mit­i­ga­tion (pol­lu­tion from stormwa­ter runoff). Rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing is an effec­tive method to run with, and Mark Gold has his eye on the pol­icy. He gave an expert’s overview with his tongue and cheek crit­i­cism and praise alike, of what needs to be pushed to move for­ward in achiev­ing suc­cess in “heal­ing the bay”. What sticks in my mind is his overview of the rain har­vest­ing matrix – tier 1–4 (more on a later blog); and prop 218 (google it; its edu­ca­tional for us polit­i­cally chal­lenged types). He also pos­i­tively reviewed the LID (Low Impact Devel­op­ment) ordi­nances, with some input from the well-informed audi­ence. Now that I think of it…the title of his talk rings true!