Most Creative Water Conservation Award Goes to San Rafael Pacifics Baseball Team

As California enters its summer and early fall months – the mostly rainless June, July, August and September – Hollywood’s rich and famous are likely to keep their lawns green despite Sacramento’s restrictions and their conservation-minded neighbors’ scorn. The technique known throughout the state as drought-shaming has had little effect on Kim Kardashian, Barbra Streisand and Jennifer Lopez. See the aerial images the New York Post published last year here.

Bay Area baseball team promises to conserve water by not washing uniforms.

Hollywood’s Red Carpet glitterati may dismiss the state’s acute drought as a mere inconvenience, but most Californians are painfully aware of the rain shortage and are reducing their water consumption. A Los Angeles Times story tells of losses from the state’s major watersheds – the Sacramento River basin, the San Joaquin River basin and the Tulare Lake basin – that have skyrocketed between 2011 and 2015, and are disappearing at a combined rate of 16 million acre-feet per year.

Times reporter Jay Famiglietti concludes, “Even when the epic drought ends, when all of the state’s surface and groundwater supplies are jointly tallied, California will still be losing water. The state simply does not have enough water to do all the things that it wants to do.”

Heeding Sacramento’s call that every drop counts and doing its best to offset wastefulness, the Independent League San Rafael Pacifics announced what may be California’s most creative conservation measure. Whenever 500 baseball fans show up to watch the Pacifics play at its 1,000-capacity Albert Park, the team will forego washing its uniforms.

Kim McGinnis, the Pacifics’ marketing vice president said the goal is to “potentially save thousands of gallons of water on our laundry.” Accordingly, the team’s new motto is: “Get dirty with the Pacifics.”

CAPS members can support the organization’s mission to help save some of America, and most urgently California, for tomorrow, and root for the environmentally aware Pacifics at the same time. Directions to Albert Field where parking is compliments of the Pacifics are here.