Canoa Northwest Homeowners save precious water

Even homeowners associations — familiar and highly visible in Green Valley and Sahuarita — can collectively conserve with a little imagination and cooperation, evidenced by dramatic landscaping changes at Canoa Ranch.

Canoa Northwest Homeowners’ Association solicited volunteers who stepped up with shovels and sweat to complete a yearlong project this summer that essentially eliminates the use of groundwater at their 12,000-square-foot entry areas.

The CNW Board estimated ground water usage to irrigate the grassy entrance areas at Calle Tres and Camino del Sol at more than 150,000 gallons during the past eight years, the equivalent of 1.8 years of water use for an average family of four.

The board applied to the Central Arizona Project about a year ago for a conservation grant to fund conversion of a large area of turf grass at the entrance monuments into native Xeriscape with gravel, boulders and desert plants. Also, storm water runoff has been diverted to maintain the plants and prevent erosion at the site.

Riprap was installed so that runoff is directed into a small wash to the east that leads into the Santa Cruz River, hopefully helping to recharge ground water supplies in the valley.

The HOA removed all the turf, as well as 90 plants that required a constant supply of water, replacing them with cacti and succulents that are native to the area and do not require watering once they are established. It also turned off water to several established palo verde trees in the median between the two entry monuments.

The Central Arizona Groundwater Replenishment District agreed to grant the HOA nearly $5,000 to put toward the project.

The district was established in Arizona in 1995 to oversee replenishment of groundwater supplies as a result of increased residential use. It receives funding for that purpose through a portion of everyone’s property taxes. Reducing your consumption, the district says, will reduce that portion of your taxes.

The HOA expects the changes will save it about $16,000 a year, said project coordinator Jerry Flowers. He noted that the March-to-September effort included approximately 400 man-hours from 55 volunteer homeowners.

“I think there is an unusual work ethic present among our homeowners,” Flowers said.

The volunteers manned the hand tools, clearing undergrowth that was filtering into the Santa Cruz River, while they regraded and rerocked areas between the entry walls, installed riprap, planted, and spread decorative gravel.

“All the time we were working on this, I kept hearing from the others that it was about time that we started going green because all that water was just being wasted,” Flowers said.

This is only one of the HOA’s landscaping projects that has been taken over by volunteers, he added, pointing to a successful “adopt a common area” program the board instituted to get homeowners to accept the responsibility of maintaining the many common areas in the neighborhood, thus saving them even more money and ensuring that landscapes were kept up for the benefit of everyone who lives there.

The program is catching on in other neighborhoods as well.

“Another HOA in Green Valley has already followed our lead,” Flowers said, pointing to the Las Campanas Capistrano HOA that has decided to start “adopting.”

“There has been a tremendous sense of volunteerism here,” he declared, acknowledging that this success shows that, with a little thought and elbow grease, people can save money for themselves and a precious resource for their environment.

Green Valley resident Mike Touzeau is a freelance writer for the Green Valley News.