ASCE San Diego - February Program: Solving Municipal Water Challenges 

One of the County’s watershed protection strategies involves incentivizing landowners to voluntarily reduce runoff by treating impervious surface, capturing rainwater for their own use and shifting to sustainable landscapes that reduce dry-weather flows. We are doing this by paying incentives for: “community showcase” projects on private land, turf conversion at homeowners associations and rain-saving projects on homeowner lots. After two years preparation and piloting projects, we officially launched San Diego County’s Waterscape Rebate Program in August 2021 and we are ready to share the first year’s results plus lessons learned with the engineering community. The accompanying infographic shows the inputs to the program, actions taken (outputs) and outcomes relevant to the public interest. We believe the County’s experience will help other municipalities who are needing to solve issues on private-property via incentive programs or public-private partnerships (P3s). A few of the lessons that we will share at the luncheon:

• Property improvement (rather than water quality) motivates engagement.
• Partnering with a water supply agency offers efficiencies but less control.
• Customer service is a sales opportunity to win more participants.
• Offering technical assistance is good for moving participants through the steps.