East Orange: City taking couple to court over front yard
February 24th, 2010, 9:26 am · 207 Comments · posted by EUGENE W. FIELDS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
An Orange couple who removed their front lawn to save water, the environment and money have earned the ire of city officials – who are taking the couple to Superior Court over the lack of green on the yard.
Quan Ha said his dispute with city officials dates back to 2008, when Ha and his wife, Angelina, decided to remove all of the grass from in front of their Orange home.
“Our water bill was $180 every two months,” said Ha, 36, an IT manager. “We wanted to save money, and we didn’t want to spend $125 a month on our gardener, and we really didn’t want to use fertilizer or water.”
Angelina Ha said the couple spent approximately $3,000 to have the grass professionally removed. She said when she and her husband discovered she was pregnant, their perspective on the environment changed.
“We wanted to be more earth-friendly,” Angelina Ha said. “It wasn’t a money-saving thing; it was a water-saving thing.”
Wayne Winthers, an assistant city attorney, said the city’s code-enforcement department received a complaint about the Ha family’s front yard, which at the time was just dirt. The yard violated a city law requiring residents to have at least 40 percent of their front property landscaped, Winthers said.
Quan Ha said when he received a violation notice about the yard in 2008, four months after taking out the lawn, he spread wood chips over the yard.
“Wood chips, in our eyes, is landscaping, especially if we don’t want grass,” Ha said. “I don’t see why wood chips are not acceptable as landscaping.”
Winthers said wood chips do not qualify as landscape, according to the city code.
“It’s not landscape material, which has to be live, living plant material,” Winthers said. “The wood chips or mulch doesn’t qualify as living material.”
In June 2009, the city sent the Ha family a draft complaint – a letter stating the city’s intent to file a complaint in court.
Angelina Ha said she and her husband then spent $1,600 to build an ornate fence that borders the property and plant some drought-tolerant plants.
“We’ve been saving for a tree, but that’s thousands of dollars,” Angelina Ha said. “We’re not putting in grass, because our daughter will be crawling around.”
Quan Ha said it was always his family’s intention to plant drought-tolerant plants.
“It’s always been a money issue,” Ha said. “We’re both fortunate to have jobs, but we also have a newborn.”
Winthers said the Ha family missed an October deadline to file a site plan for how they would bring their yard up to code and the city filed court papers.
“They won’t comply, I think, without being forced to,” Winthers said. “We’ve ended up at a crossroads, so we’ll go to court.”
There is a March 2 court date.
Angelina Ha said she mailed photos of the yard with the fence and drought-resistant plants to the city’s code-enforcement department in November but never heard back.
“Because we didn’t get a response, we thought it was fine,” she said. “We’d rather not go to court.”
Quan Ha said his family’s water bill has dropped to $48 every two months, and Ha said his family is helping the environment by not using fertilizer.
“It goes against everything some cities are saying by asking people not to water their lawns,” Ha said of the lawsuit. “California is still a desert.”
Winthers said the goal of taking the Ha family to court is to get them to come into compliance with city law. The maximum penalty, if the Ha family is found guilty of a misdemeanor, is up to six months in jail and up to a $1,000 fine.
“We’re not looking to send anyone to prison, we want compliance,” Winthers said. “This is a last-resort type of thing, because we’ve worked with these people for a long time.”