Orange County Great Park

The Orange County Great Park, with its 1,347-acre master plan, is the focal point of the redevelopment of the 4,700-acre former Marine Corps Air Station, El Toro. Phase 1 of development of the 28-acre south lawn, included extensions to the Ken Smith-envisioned timeline and a first of its kind large scale overland stormwater harvesting system for reuse as irrigation. Among many of the forward-thinking sustainability goals of the project, Sherwood worked on decreasing the irrigation demands of the park and reusing as much water on site as possible. The project now harvests and stores all available onsite and offsite runoff in a series of aesthetically pleasing storage basins.  Stormwater from these basins is then treated and reused for irrigation with the aim of reducing the municipally purchased reclaimed water required by over 50%. The project offers a new model for water resources management within the LA basin.