 episode of In the Studio. We're here today with Leslie Crenna of WaterWise Davis. She's also the communications coordinator for Cool Davis. And we're here to talk about the Grey Water Showcase that's upcoming in July and what the Grey Water Recycling is. So could you tell us a little bit about that, Leslie? Absolutely, Alex. So Grey Water is discharge water from your washing machines and from your showers and kitchen sink bathroom sinks. Okay, and what is the recycling part of it? So typically when you use water in your home it goes to the sewer and it goes to our wastewater treatment plant here in Davis. So ideally in an effort to reuse that water because it is a useful resource, that water is redirected to your landscape typically and it can be used to water, you know, a variety of plants in your garden. Okay, and so what is the, how does that process occur? Obviously there's some equipment and things that are used. There is. In fact I brought one of the primary pieces of equipment that is used. This is called a three-way valve. It's typically used for pool and spa equipment, but it's very useful for Grey Water. So the way that this valve is set right now, water actually either goes, it goes in here from your, in this case, laundry, laundry washer and it can travel in here and then go out this way or if you move the handle there the water can go in here and travel out this way. Okay, so you take the wastewater from your laundry or from your shower. That's right. Obviously the things, not the sewage from your toilet system or whatever. So in California, like I said Grey Water is defined as water from your washer or your shower or your bathroom sinks and kitchen water is is defined as black water. So kitchen water cannot be used. Well actually it's considered light Grey Water and then toilet is black water. Black water, okay. And so does this water require any treatment or does it just go straight out into your garden? So there are different types of systems. The simple and lowest tech system, you can discharge the water directly to the landscape without any filtering or pumps or anything like that. There also are higher tech systems where you can filter and pump the discharge water and use it for drip and spray irrigation after that. If spray, if you do some UV treatment. But all of that adds a lot of expense and equipment and then you sort of lose the benefit and the value of the resources that you put into the system. So we try to stick with and encourage people in Davis and everywhere to stick with those lower tech systems. Okay. And are there any things that people should avoid putting in their grains and stuff? Absolutely. Yeah absolutely. So for a washing machine there are special detergents that are the main quality that you need to use for your laundry detergent is that it has no sodium in it or is very low in sodium because plants don't like salt. It kills them. If you want to kill a plant put some salt water on it. So valve like this say you did a load of whites and you're using all this bleach on it you don't want the bleach going out. Right so no bleach no oil or gas if you're you know you have rags or if you're working on your car that kind of thing you don't want to wash those and put that on your landscape. You don't want to use chlorine bleach. There are other kinds of I've heard of people talk about oxygen bleach. There's other which is basically hydrogen. Well hydrogen peroxide is a really great stain remover and that's fine for the gray water system and for the garden. And that's why you'd want this valve so that when you had different types of loads you can send some through the regular system. So the point of the valve is to be code compliant and for health purposes. So you can if the valve is set one direction the water is going to the landscape and if the valve is set the other direction it's going to the sewer. So you still have that ability of say there's flooding which of course we had a lot of flooding this last season. You have that ability to send the water to the sewer if you need to. Okay well let's talk a little bit about this gray water showcase that waterwise has organized. When let's see well let's start with when it's occurring. Okay so we're having a gray water showcase at the senior center here in Davis on July 12th which is a Wednesday evening from 5.30 to 7.30 and it is sponsored by Waterwise Davis which is now working group of Cool Davis and full disclosure one of my other hats is communications coordinator for Cool Davis. So my rolls dovetail there nicely. And we're having we have support from the City of Davis with this. The City of Davis is providing us the facility and they're doing some from helping us do promotions and they're also sponsoring some door prizes where we are going to be giving away two laundry gray water parts kits which will be sort of the essential parts including one of these and some of the other parts that are challenging to get just at the local hardware store. Okay and I know you have a sort of a big lineup of speakers. You have the Mayor Pro Tem, Brett Lee coming. That's right. Who else will be there to provide information to people who are curious about gray water recycling? Yeah so just to sort of go chronological through the program Paul Havenman is with UCD land management. He's going to be our master of ceremonies and open up the event and then Brett Lee, Mayor Pro Tem and Council Member will be there to give some comments at the beginning. Then we're going to have a general short presentation that's just a general overview of gray water so that people can come who really are very new to the concept and kind of come away at least even from that part. Having an idea of the general sense there's two basic kinds of systems and what the parts are and what your design considerations are so that'll be a short segment. Then we're going to have a panel and the panel is going to be system owners, people who have gray water systems at their home and they're going to basically introduce themselves and talk a little bit about you know how they got their system and what it's like to operate their system and how it's impacted their landscape and their water use. Okay and then after the panel we're having open tabling so we're actually going to have open tabling at the beginning and at the end and Greg Mahoney who is the Chief Building Officer for the City of Davis will be available to ask code questions and Don Calciano will also be available who's our conservation coordinator for the City of Davis who specializes in water so she can answer questions about water conservation in general and we are also planning on having some vendors and providers of services around gray water so there'll be opportunities for that and members of Waterwise Davis will be there to answer design questions. Some of our members are certified in gray water installation and design and are able to answer those kind of questions and we're in the next month we're putting together a little demo so not a fully functioning system but some you know just some props to help people get an idea of what the parts of the system are and how it works. Okay and I understand Robin Waxman of Farm Davis will also be there to answer questions about maybe using this to irrigate your garden. So Robin Waxman has a laundry system out at Farm so she'll be on our panel and I've asked all the panelists to be available at those tabling periods also so that there'll be time for kind of downtime to chat one-on-one as well to get an idea of you know what's it like to have a system you know who put it in how how well what did it cost how difficult was it and how easy was it and you know are your trees really happy what does your landscape look like. Okay and this is an open event right anybody? Absolutely open to the public completely free no cost whatsoever in fact there's some prizes so you might come away with on the plus side. Okay so that's where people can find out more about these systems now I noticed on the website that you recently posted a blog post about why should people still be concerned about conserving water we just had a winner there was a record rainfall before that we did have drought so why is conserving water and this still important. Right so cool Davis website has an event post about the showcase so you can go there to get information about the showcase and it also has an article about water conservation and honestly there has been a little bit of a drop-off in interest in conserving water and reusing water which is gray water is considered reuse because of this flooding that we had this winter but you know according to scientists and our governor who has has issued quite a bit of legislation and a plan for water into the future we need to start planning for cycles of drought and flood and you know our past five and six years have shown obviously that that is the case that we had a five year drought and then we had a year of flood and so you know it is a demotivator for folks when there's so much water but at the same time we could be starting another drought this year another cycle of that's right another cycle of drought water and yes the reservoirs are full but long term the state of California and Davis and compliance with the state is going to be having restrictions and water use and what's really amazing about through the drought we've used 11 million gallons of water a day in the city of Davis before the drought and when we cut back in the low 30s was sort of our average over the period of the drought we cut that to nine million gallons just by people can you know converting their lawns a few gray water systems just you know some better habits like you know turning down when you run the water on your on your sink just you don't have to pull it full blast just you know on a little bit and watering your lawns appropriately only watering ten minutes and then and then cycling off and then ten minutes and those kinds of techniques three million gallons of water we saved and the even though there has been more water this past year the state conservation regulations in the city of Davis are still going to be enforcing that's right water conservation regulations so the state is working on long-term usage restrictions basically and and when those get formulated Davis will be required to implement them okay and we're getting close to the end so let's wrap up by talking about what benefits someone can expect from installing these types of systems so so great water is a little different from our regular water and that it has a little bit of nutrient in it and it's it's slightly base in its pH so it it's a great source for your landscape it's a daily source because it's coming from showers and laundry and typically you know you're going to be using that water on a regular basis you're gonna save on your water bill and you're going to you know use less water obviously which is good for our environment and and the general restrictions and you know outdoor watering is takes a huge quantity of water and it really connects people with how much water we use because typically in the past we have had this ethic of just blowing through water because it's free it's it's so inexpensive and the reality is it's not free and and it costs the city of Davis a good deal of money to provide that well they just spend millions on the surface water project that's right and and that comes back to us in taxes and other fees and so we really are saving water not just on our bill but on infrastructure costs in our community and and it just builds our resilience as a community as well okay well is there anything else you'd like to add I know there's also still a rebate I believe if you convert your lawn to a more drought tolerant that's right it uses less water to begin with the state of California has an extremely generous lawn turf conversion rebate which is $2 per square foot and even if you're paying for a landscape contractor to do you know a typical you know not doing it yourself paying someone fully to do it that can that can cover almost half the cost so it's very generous rebate and yes let's go to save our water org and you can get that rebate okay anything else you'd like to add before we wrap it up come on down to the showcase it's it's going to be a good time it's there's not going to be a lot of sitting around there's going to be a lot of interaction one-on-one and talking really getting to talk to people that have had you know had these systems at their home they know what they're like and they understand the benefits and you might get a free water kit for your laundry system okay well thank you very much Leslie thanks Alex that wraps up another episode of in the studio thank you for joining us and we'll see you next time