CUCINA enoteca Irvine has the honor of being the first restaurant awarded WaterStar Restaurant Certification by Irvine Ranch Water District. The fashionable eatery also celebrates its eighth anniversary at the Irvine Spectrum Center this month.

The restaurant saves water and energy with an EPA EnergyStar-certified commercial dishwasher and an air-cooled ice machine. CUCINA enoteca also installed high-efficiency toilets and faucets and took advantage of free water-efficient prerinse spray valves provided by IRWD. “Everyone should do their part to save water,” CUCINA enoteca Manager Sal Hernandez said. “We are happy to be recognized for being water conscious.”

Learn more at RightScapeNow.com/waterstar.

• Board of Directors
• Matheis
• Reinhart

The Irvine Ranch Water District Board of Directors this week elected Mary Aileen Matheis to serve as president, and Douglas Reinhart to serve as vice president for 2020. The selections were made at the Dec. 16 meeting.

Matheis, a lawyer and member of the Orange County Association of Realtors, has served on the IRWD Board of Directors since 1988. She previously served as president in 2001, 2012 and 2016, and as vice president for eight of the past 30 years.

Reinhart, a licensed civil engineer with more than 30 years of experience in the private sector, has served on the board since 2004. He served as president in 2007, 2009, 2010, 2013, 2017 and 2018. In addition to his 2020 term as vice president, he served in that capacity in 2006 and 2016.

Irvine Ranch Water District Board President Steven LaMar has been elected to a two-year term as president of the Association of California Water Agencies, the largest statewide coalition of public water agencies in the nation.

ACWA members elected him to his new role after two years as the association’s vice president. His term as president will begin in January.

LaMar, a water policy and planning expert, has served on the IRWD Board of Directors since 2009, including terms as president in 2019, 2015, 2014 and 2011 and as vice president in 2018 and 2013.

LaMar has extensive water policy service. He was a member of the California Water Plan 2009 Advisory Committee and a member of the Delta Vision Stakeholders Coordination Group. He was chair of the Economic Work Group for the 2006 California Landscape Task Force. He served as a member of the 2005 State Water Desalination Task Force and the 2000 Governor’s Advisory Drought Planning Panel, and was chair of the California Building Industry Association’s statewide Water Resources Subcommittee and Task Force.

He is past chair of ACWA’s Federal Affairs and Headwaters Task Force, and has served on the board of several other water-related organizations, including the National Water Resources Association (representing 17 Western states), the Southern California Water Coalition, CalDesal and the National Water Research Institute.

Newly elected ACWA President Steven LaMar addresses participants at the 2019 ACWA Fall Conference & Exhibition in San Diego.

Steven LaMar laughs with colleagues at the ACWA’s State Legislative Committee's meet-and-greet coffee break.

• efficiency
• WaterStar
• Award
• OCBC

Area businesses are doing a lot to save water – 250 million gallons’ worth – thanks to Irvine Ranch Water District’s WaterStar program, which was honored with an award from one of Orange County’s most prominent business organizations.

The Orange County Business Council, at its annual “Turning Red Tape into Red Carpet” reception, presented the District and its WaterStar program with the Sustainable and Green Development Award for working with businesses to help them identify effective ways to save water.

The program helps businesses cut through the red tape of applying for rebates, and enhances those incentives with financial bonuses for the products used in their projects.

Recent WaterStar recipients include:

• Great Park Ice, (saving 4.3 million gallons of water using recycled water for the ice in the rinks and landscaping, and for installing water-efficient fixtures in the building)
• Checkered Flag Express car wash in Lake Forest, (using reclaimed water to save 20 to 60 gallons per vehicle)
• U.C. Irvine, (saving 78 million gallons of drinking water annually by using recycled water in cooling towers, irrigation, and upgrading to high-efficiency fixtures in restrooms)
• Hyatt House Irvine, (which has the distinction of being the first dual-plumbed hotel in California – if not the nation – to use recycled water for flushing toilets in guest rooms)

Many other recipients, like Canon USA, Kia Design Center, Hoag Hospital Irvine, Chapman University Rinker Health Science Campus and Hyatt House have implemented water-efficient irrigation systems, drought-tolerant landscaping and other efficiency measures.