Mission Hills holds summit to discuss drought solutions

In the midst of California’s historic drought one of the valley’s largest country clubs taking matters into its own hands.

Community leaders gathered Saturday at the Mission Hills Country Club to address the state’s water crisis.

In response to California’s state of emergency, members of the Mission Hills community met to discuss new ways to address water crisis.

“We just think it’s time to get together to talk about the kinds of things that we can do that are effective that make big changes in the amount of water we use, but not big changes in our lifestyle,” Roger Snowbie of the Mission Hills Board of Governors said.

Representatives from the Living Desert, Sunnylands and CVWD attended to offer advice to the community.

“Checking for leaks -homeowners, HOAs – lose a lot of water from leaks so that’s really important. Irrigating at night is a good way to lose water loss due to evaporation. Country clubs that have restaurants need to make sure they they’re abiding by state restrictions of only serving water when people ask for it,” CVWD Communication director Heather Engel said.

With more than 1,800 homes spread over 1,500 acres — the Mission Hills community can greatly improve water conservation.

“All kinds of planning, particularly conversion to more desertscape because it uses significantly less water. It’s much more water-wise. So there are many many different strategies that can be used by different HOAs and different people in the community to save water that they need to save,” Snowble said.

While the Country Club has already made water-saving improvements such as converting landscaping and adding low-flow toilets, they said they hope the summit will encourage homeowners to follow suit.

“The Country Club takes up some of the space here but the residences take up a lot more and so they have to kind of follow suit and do the right things, too” Snowble said.

Judging by the packed room, it seems like residents are ready to make some changes.