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Groups help resolve landscaping issues

October 3, 2007

John Cobourn, water resource specialist, works in his UNR Cooperative Extension office in Incline Village on Sept. 26. Two organizations in North Lake Tahoe are helping residents make their homes safer from fire. The UNR Cooperative Extension Office and the Parasol Foundation are working together to educate homeowners and help them implement Best Management Practices and defensible space around homes and businesses.

“We want to create a better understanding of how BMPs can work with defensible space practices,” said John Cobourn, water resource specialist of the UNR Cooperative Extension Office. “Some residents are focused on their private lives and don’t have time for landscaping education. We want to reach them.”

The UNR Cooperative Extension Office is an outreach of the University of Nevada, Reno. Its mission is to deliver information helping communities solve problems and deal with critical social, economic, and environmental issues. In North Lake Tahoe, Cooperative Extension often collaborates with Parasol Community Foundation, an organization that brings together local agencies to reduce duplication of services and thus maximize funding for communities, established in 1996. These organizations have teamed to help mediate between official agencies and homeowners in clarifying and implementing BMPs and defensible space.

Being a part of the public helps gather funds to educate and support the community. Parasol Foundation raises money to fill in financial needs for fundamental issues in the community.

“After the Angora fire, we opened the Defensible Space Fund,” said Claudia Andersen, Parasol president and community drector. “Our goal is to find resource gaps.”

The Defensible Space Fund is part of the Parasol Environmental Team project. Andersen’s first step in this process was to convene a group of professionals and experts to start a conversation with residents about defensible space at a community meeting on August 30, 2007. More than 100 homeowners came to talk about reducing fire risk.
The foundation raised money, but the distribution has been temporarily postponed.

“We started off well,” Andersen said. “Now we’re talking individually to agencies about their plans in changing policies and then we will distribute the funds accordingly.”

Andersen and Cobourn said collaboration is a key to successful community work. For example, fliers informing residents about Cobourn’s BMPs training in Spanish were distributed at “Project Mana” food relief kick-off.

“We work with agencies who are experts in their field to increase productivity and information exchange,” Andersen said.

John Cobourn, hydrologist and a specialist on BMPs and defensible space, has worked with the Tahoe community since 1997. He is one of the authors of the Home Landscaping Guide, a compendium of landscaping knowledge at Lake Tahoe. In 2000, after two years of work, the first edition was published. Having a wide public response made him realize that the guide was a great tool to educate residents, but the community needed more help.

“Having a book is not enough,” Cobourn said. “We needed an organization or a coalition to get the word out.”

Thus, in 2000 Cobourn started the Lake Tahoe Environmental Education Coalition. The main goal was to educate homeowners. For three years, the coalition published news letters, had a weekly 90-second segment in KOLO TV news, and a weekly section in the Tahoe Bonanza newspaper. A lot of people in the basin were interested the activities of the coalition, according to Cobourn.
“We have a record of about 3,000 residents involved in working with us,” Cobourn said. “We also put different environmental educators together.”

However in 2004 state funds ended and Cobourn found it too hard to gather new grants. Financial needs and lack of support caused the coalition to come to an end.

“Although there’s quite a bit of money available to work on Tahoe ground projects, there is reluctance to spend money on environmental educational programs,” Cobourn said.

Andersen doesn’t feel the pressure of money so much as Parasol is financed mostly by individuals donating funds. Parasol has four areas of activities, education and youth development, arts and culture, social services, and environment. Andersen says the community response and support are solid.

“We get a lot of residents contacting us and coming through our door,” Andersen said.

Her organization sends out a newsletter, has a weekly column in Tahoe Bonanza, and is located in a popular community building along with other social organizations.

“We are planning to send out an electronic newsletter and we are soon opening an online forum in addition to our regular promotional activities,” Andersen said.

Helping residents comprehend and monitor policies effectively is Andersen and Cobourn’s main concern. To reach as many Tahoe residents as possible they both are alert to current needs in the community. Andersen and Cobourn are local leaders on a mission to contribute to the community.

Contact information:
Parasol Tahoe Community Foundation
Claudia Andersen
(775) 298.0187
mailto:claudiaa@parasol.org
UNR Cooperative Extension
John Cobourn
(775) 832-4144
mailto:cobournj@unce.unr.edu

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Written by Kamila Pawlik · Filed Under Landscaping, Nuestro Tahoe 

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