Rationing Makes Conservation Fair a Timely Stop for Shoppers

People in the lunchtime crowd at Arco Plaza couldn’t resist reaching out and touching what looked like tiny chunks of sparkling ice spilled on Lawrence Troisi’s display table. Invariably they jerked back, startled, as soon as their skin made contact.

“Yech,” one woman blurted as she realized the “ice” was really hunks of a chilly, jellylike substance called Broadleaf P4.

“Where do you buy this stuff?” an intrigued Gary Lissow of Glendale asked Troisi. The marketer was happy to tell him.

Broadleaf P4--which at first looks like aquarium gravel--absorbs and holds water like a parched sponge after it is mixed into dirt around plants and trees. The substance was one of several products on display at the Los Angeles office complex in what was billed as the city’s “First Ever Downtown Water Conservation Fair.”

It was a sort of flea market for those worried about California’s five-year drought and anxious to comply with Los Angeles’ tough new mandatory water rationing measures, which take effect Friday.

The exhibit also gave manufacturers of water conservation products and growers of low-water-use plants a chance to show their wares.

In addition to Broadleaf P4, there were plants that don’t need much water, toilets that don’t flush much water and irrigation devices that don’t release much water.

Most of it was not for sale--at the fair anyway--but one exhibitor was doing a booming business hawking what are probably the most drought-proof plants of all--cacti and succulents.

“I started out with six flats (trays of plants) and now I have just two,” said the exhibitor, who identified herself only as Sue. It was only two hours into the four-hour fair, which was sponsored by the Tishman West property management firm.

The fair only coincidentally fell just two days before Angelenos have to cut their water usage by 10% from 1986 levels or face stiff financial penalties, a spokesperson for Tishman West said.

The company, she explained, started planning the fair three months ago, long before the Los Angeles City Council approved the latest phases of its five-year drought plan.

The water restrictions undoubtedly drew hundreds of people who streamed through the fair. One organizer estimated that as many as 3,000 downtown workers and others had stopped by during a three-hour period.

Some, no doubt, were drawn by the freebies T-shirts, low-flow shower heads and buttons with water conservation slogans, but most were there to pick up brochures on water conservation, advice from experts on such things as drought appropriate landscaping and to check out the gizmos.

“It matches perfectly the tile in my bathroom. How much water per flush?” asked Joshua Contreras of Alhambra, as he admired a coral-colored toilet at Kohler Co.’s display.

The model that caught his eye uses only 1 1/2 gallons, as opposed to as much as seven gallons, a company representative told him, and costs about $175.

A sleek, Porsche of a toilet also displayed flushes the same amount, but sells for five times that amount.

Across the aisle, at the tables of the Greater Los Angeles Green Industry Council, a woman was asking about the low- water-use greenery on display.

“Will these grow in high desert areas?” she asked, her eyes perusing the ceanothus and other potted plants.

She was assured they would.