This year Urban Tilth has been excited to work on Rheem Creek in partnership with American Rivers, The Watershed Project, and Contra Costa County. Construction of the new creek channel should be fully complete in October 2024, after which Urban Tilth’s Watershed Restoration Field Crew will plant over 500 hand-grown California native plants to revegetate this channel. When completed this project will restore ecosystem processes, invite pollinators and other animals back to the creek and surrounding areas, and protect the Rollingwood community from flooding.
Under the Basins of Relations program funded through the Transformative Climate Communities Grant (TCC Grant), so far, Urban Tilth has installed 20 water savings systems for low-income Richmond homeowners in the Iron Triangle, Santa Fe, and Coronado neighborhoods. These greywater and water conservation systems include the reuse of laundry water to irrigate plants, water catchment systems that collect rainwater for irrigation, and drip irrigation systems that replace wasteful sprinklers with this water-conserving technology. We estimate, through these first 20 installs, that residents will save approximately 175,000 gallons of water each year, lowering their water bills and helping us be more resilient in a drought prone state!
Stories from our Community
At the start of the program, a homeowner from Richmond reached out for assistance with her garden, as maintaining her space had become more difficult with age. The team installed a drip irrigation system to make plant care easier and more sustainable, then helped repot her plants, refreshed her yard, and provided new native plants for her garden.
Adding to this success, we have begun offering drought-tolerant native plants from our nursery to residents to add to their homes creating more resilient landscaping. So far we have planted over 70 native plants in 16 homes! This has been a helpful resource for homeowners who don’t have existing landscaping and/or are looking for a more sustainable boost to their yard.
We are also creating an opportunity to train 30 young people interested in learning these skills and permanently employing a good amount of them so that they gain invaluable work experience during the 5 years of this project.
Lastly, we are on pace to exceed our goal for total installs for this first year of the program and have received positive feedback from community members.
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