Some Healdsburg Residents Still Conserving Water

A TV news crew from CBS stopped by our little town during the recent storm to explore a clever news angle. “One Sonoma County town remembers three years ago, when their water supply almost ran dry,” the CBS anchor says in the resulting segment. “John Ramos reports from Healdsburg where no one is taking the rain for granted.” Ramos, against the backdrop of a raging Russian River, continues: “These recent rainstorms have once again swollen the rivers to their banks, and for many the drought is a distant memory. But here in Healdsburg, they remember the dry times — and the lessons they learned.” For the segment, CBS interviewed former Healdsburg mayor and water conservation advocate Brigette Mansell, who has really become the poster child of drought consciousness here in town. The cameras scan her Healdsburg yard, tricked out with a “homemade runoff collection system that filters water from her roof into a large storage tank.” (“She washed her car with it last week,” Ramos reports.) “Healdsburg is in a great place with water,” Brigette tells him, “except that the Russian River continues to flow to the west — and as everybody knows, until we capture the water, we’re not out of the problem of a drought.” In another interview downtown at Antique Harvest, store employee Barbara Mendez adds: “I watch the river, and it’s going to the ocean. What if we don’t have any rain next year? We could have saved all that.” Ramos brings it home: “Perhaps more than any other place in the Bay Area, Healdsburg has felt the sting of drought. The river may be running high now, but with climate change, no one here is confident it will stay that way.” (Source: CBS News)