Learn how to catch rainwater at upcoming Arroyo Grande workshop

As the county holds its breath waiting for the much-heralded El Niño rains to arrive, the city of Arroyo Grande and Coastal San Luis Resource Conservation District are partnering on a workshop that will teach South County residents how to capture and reuse rainwater.

Workshop attendees will also receive information on how they could get up to $999 in rebates to install rainwater-catching projects on their properties; this could be the last time that money is available.

The free workshop will be Thursday at the Arroyo Grande City Council chambers. Representatives from local environmental and engineering firms will talk about how to build rain gardens, install porous pavers and rain barrels and direct roof runoff to landscaped areas or planted trees, said Nicole Smith, conservations program manager for the Coastal San Luis Resource Conservation District.

“I think a lot of people will relate to this from the conservation standpoint because they are like, ‘Oh well, we don’t have water,’ but we actually are more concerned with the water quality side,” she said. “The goal of the program is to retain as much water as possible before it can run off and become contaminated.”

Connected solid surfaces such as pavement and rooftops generate roughly five times more runoff than a woodland area of the same size, and that runoff picks up pollutants along the way as it travels to streams and oceans, according to Smith. That contaminated runoff can be stopped by installing projects that capture or slow the water on a property before it runs through the pollutants — like a rain garden that holds the water in a depression, or porous pavers that are arranged to have spaces around them where the water can soak back down into the soil.

“Our motto is something like, ‘slow it, spread it, sink it,’ ” Smith said.

The district, through its StormRewards Program, has offered rebates since 2013 to residents in Arroyo Grande, Nipomo and San Luis Obispo to help install these rain-friendly practices on their properties. According to Smith, the district has provided rebates to roughly 45 homeowners and educated over 150 community members in the past three years.

Smith also said a total of 77 rainwater catching projects have been installed with the program’s help.

The rebates are provided through a $264,347 grant from the state Water Resources Control Board, but the organization is approaching the end of its funding. Once that happens, the rebates will no longer be available.

Smith said she expects the money will have dried up by the end of the year, and cautioned that this rebate period — which closes March 11 — might be the last.

“We may have another one, probably around May or June, depending on how many people take advantage of this current period,” she said. “But that’s up in the air.”

This story was originally published February 29, 2016 at 7:53 PM with the headline "Learn how to catch rainwater at upcoming Arroyo Grande workshop."