The natural settings of your home and property might be the last places you might look for pollution and stormwater runoff problems. But on average, homeowners use ten times more chemical fertilizers and pesticide per acre than farmers use on farmland. Especially if applied improperly, these chemicals can pollute nearby lakes and streams and find their way into drinking water wells.
By reducing residential runoff, you reduce the amount of contaminated runoff from your property that enters your local waterways, and you reduce the amount of constituents—natural and man-made—in that runoff. Protecting groundwater and surface water quality is essential to you, your community, and others downstream. There are a variety of simple and inexpensive methods we can do in our homes and home landscapes that can reduce our burden or enhance the quality of natural resources in the watershed.
The RCD of Santa Cruz County created a very helpful publication, ‘Slow it, Spread It, Sink It - A Homeowner’s Guide to Greening Stormwater Runoff (2009)’ that contains a wealth of information related to managing and preventing residential runoff. RCD of Monterey County can also provide you with assistance or more information for the following Conservation Practice methods for reducing residential runoff.