City of Bakersfield looking to drought-resistant streetscaping in long-range effort to save water
California may be flooding, but the multiyear drought is far from over. It only makes sense that the city of Bakersfield has its eye on reducing water use over the long term on city-owned properties and streetscaping along Bakersfield’s busy avenues and major traffic arteries. It’s why the city has begun taking advantage of incentives offered by California Water Service Co. that have the potential to return hundreds of thousands of dollars to city coffers, while saving millions of gallons of water annually. CalWater has established a program for customers, both big and small, that incentivizes turf replacement with drought-tolerant landscaping, sometimes called xeriscape. The program reimburses CalWater’s account holders up to $3 for each square foot of turf removed.