Water Watch : Pasadena’s New Drought Education Officer Goes With the Flow

Gilbert Jorgensen carefully parked his car so that the white-haired woman hosing leaves off her sidewalk got a good look at the sign--”Drought Education Officer.”

But before he got five steps from his car, Virginia Taber, 82, launched into him.

“Have you been down to Oak Knoll?” she asked. “They’ve got four and five gardeners there watering. I’m down to one shower a week, and I have a gallon container that I put underneath my faucet every time I turn it on. I spent $2,000 on this lawn and I’m not going to let it die. I’ve lived here for 72 years.”

Jorgensen just smiled. “I’m not going to argue with you,” he said good-naturedly. After trying to persuade Taber not to hose the driveway, Jorgensen moved on.

Such encounters are routine for the city’s new drought education officer. While other cities such as Santa Barbara and Glendale have adopted mandatory water conservation measures, Pasadena is relying on voluntary efforts and the friendly persuasion of Jorgensen.

“It reminds me of being a politician,” Jorgensen said on a recent weekday as he cruised Pasadena’s quiet residential streets. “You’ve got to be diplomatic with people, and you’ve got to figure out what you’re going to say. You don’t want to offend them, because it is a voluntary thing.”

Faced with a four-year drought and a request by the Metropolitan Water District that Pasadena reduce water consumption by 10%, the Board of Directors in May approved voluntary restraints on water use under Water Shortage Plan I. Cards were sent out with water bills listing measures to save water.

The voluntary measures include no hosing of sidewalks or driveways, no filling of fountains or ponds unless they are equipped with a water recycling system, no serving of drinking water in restaurants unless requested by customers, no draining or refilling of swimming pools, and no landscape watering between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.

The city also created the temporary post of drought education officer. Jorgensen, a former real estate salesman and Jet Propulsion Lab administrator, landed the job after he went to the city water department to pick up a handful of low-flow shower heads and casually asked about job openings.

“It was just a spontaneous thing, spur of the moment,” said Jorgensen, who won’t give his age and doesn’t want to be called a senior citizen. “I do things like that a lot.”

Yet his approach to the job has been serious, dogged and determined. In his first month, he logged more than 600 calls, averaging 30 a day.

“I try to give the program a high profile because I feel it’s so important,” he said. “We have a serious drought and the situation could worsen.”

With his glasses, friendly blue eyes and gray sideburns, Jorgensen resembles a clean-shaven Santa Claus. It is a demeanor that comes in handy in a job where he has to approach total strangers, walk on their property and try to persuade them to use less water.

For Pasadena residents, high water use is almost a tradition in a city filled with large, old homes and extensive landscaping. The city consumes 36,000 acre feet, or 11.7 billion gallons, of water annually, said Mariann Long, conservation coordinator for the city Water and Power Department. (An acre foot is 325,850 gallons, or the amount it would take to cover an acre with water one foot deep.)

The usage comes to 224 gallons per day per resident, an amount higher than the state average of 165 gallons.

Still, Pasadena residents reduced their water consumption this June by 9.5% compared with the same month last year, even though temperatures averaged six degrees hotter this June, Long said.

Jorgensen believes he can take some credit for the reduction, with his nine-hour days on the streets. He begins each day with a computer printout from the city’s meter readers of addresses where they’ve spotted water waste. The city also receives tips on a water telephone hot line, (818) 584-WATER.

On a recent weekday, Jorgensen set out with eight such calls to make, plus a visit to a resident who had taken photos of sprinkler runoff from a nearby business to document water waste.

“It’s unreal what he has there. It’s wild,” Jorgensen said referring to the water waste.

Sure enough, the photos taken by Rich Kasten showed water flowing freely into a parking lot. But Jorgensen decided against using the photos when he talked with Bob Woodard, owner of a nearby auto air-conditioning business.

“I’m all for conservation, no problem there,” Woodard said, as he and Jorgensen discussed ways of eliminating the problem.

Jorgensen then headed out to a McDonald’s restaurant where employees had been spotted hosing the lot. But the restaurant manager assured Jorgensen that the corporation had adopted a policy of using buckets and mops to clean lots.

He next headed for residential streets, the source of most of his calls. He drove at 25 m.p.h. close to the curb, a speed that allowed him time to catch the dark stain of a puddle in the street or the mist from water sprinklers going full blast in the heat of day.

During the afternoon, he left notes at a number of homes whose sprinklers were going full blast. He stopped when he encountered gardeners watering in the middle of the day and advised them of water conservation measures.

A call from the city took him to an address on Marengo Avenue where water reportedly was gushing out of a pipe into the gutter. But when Jorgensen arrived, he found dry gutters and no water, a bad call.

With his day ending, he turned to head back to the city garage. As he rounded a corner, he spotted a man hosing leaves into the gutter. The man became visibly nervous when Jorgensen pulled up. “This is a friendly visit,” Jorgensen assured him, before explaining about not hosing sidewalks.

“Thank you,” the man said. “Sorry. I’ll never do it any more.”