Torrents of errant water overflow from Orange County lawns and yards every day — enough to create a waterfall on the Newport Coast that flows 24/7, gradually eating its way into the face of a bluff and creating its own mini-canyon.

Such runoff is bad for local habitat, altering the vegetation and its complement of animals, and weakening oak trees.

It also fills near-shore ocean waters with pesticides and fertilizer.

How to fight contaminated urban runoff? Roll out the robots.

For the past four years, with rebates and other incentives, local water officials have been enticing homeowners to take the plunge — that is, set up an automatic sprinkler system that knows your yard, its plants, soil, slope, sunlight and seasons, and adjusts the watering accordingly.

Some can even communicate with weather stations, or just the Weather Channel, and modify your sprinkling schedule with real-time data.

Plants in the shade might get a bit less water, those in the sun a bit more; those on slopes might get water in short spurts, so it soaks in instead of running down the gutter.

And if the forecast calls for rain, the robot gardener might stop the whole show, suspending watering until the storm is over.

These smart systems, consisting of a computer that controls a series of valves, which themselves run a series of sprinkler heads, can be a bit pricey, from several hundred dollars to a couple thousand, depending on the area covered and the type of system used.

That’s where the rebates come in.

Joe Berg, who manages the smart timer rebate program for the Municipal Water District of Orange County, says homeowners anywhere in Orange County can apply for rebates at $60 per valve if they install a smart timer.

“In most cases that covers the full cost of the smart timer,” Berg says.

So say you have 10 valves hooked up to a $400 timer, and your installation cost is $250. You’d get a $600 rebate, Berg says. The program has enough money to continue handing out rebates for at least the next three years.

A separate program for commercial operations offers a rebate of $750 per acre.

But does it work?

Results since the program began in 2004 say yes. After a modest start in 2004, with 54 home systems and 31 commercial systems installed, Berg’s program reported a savings of 19,163 gallons per day.

Four years later, with 1,972 home systems and 2,104 commercial ones, the program saved 1.2 million gallons per day.

That’s a lot less polluted water dumped on the Orange County coast. And who knows? Maybe one day the runoff waterfall at Buck Gulley will dry up.

Get rebate information at BeWaterWise.com.

Read discussions of water timers at GardenWeb

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