Grass: America’s Largest Irrigated Crop

“Kill Your Lawn,” urges the Sacramento News & Review in a story about cutting residential water use by ripping out turf and putting in climate-appropriate plants. (This call to action sounds familiar: See “A Call for an End to Primpy Lawns.”) With in its fourth year of drought and water supplies getting unsettlingly low, SNR writer Ted Cox asks why on earth property owners should be cultivating water-intensive lawns that go largely unused. The scene he paints could be any number of American cities:

Spend a few minutes cruising the post-5 p.m. streets of just about any Sacramento residential neighborhood—by bicycle or electric vehicle, of course—and you’ll soon notice what’s really funny about the lawns: They’re mostly empty stretches of grass. There are no kids sliding and slipping down Slip ’n Slides; no neighbors chugging beers on front-porch overlooks, arguing about just how bad the Sacramento Kings suck.

When something is happening in the front yard, it almost always has to do with someone pushing a lawn mower or lugging an edge trimmer—or maybe a sprinkler system spraying water on the grass and onto the driveway.

In other words, the only thing going on in most of these large, grassy front yards is the work put into maintaining them.

http://www.utne.com/Wild-Green/Grass-Americas-Largest-Irrigated-Crop.aspx?utm_content=10.26.10+Arts&utm_campaign=Emerging+Ideas-Every+Day&utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email

because residents, and our rusting idled industries, have cut back on water use.

Moreover, sewage and rainwater control is falling apart here to pay for improvements governments have put heavy surcharges and fees onto water bills. The result is very little lawn watering and reliance on precipitation.

The utility is desperate to sell water and will offer discounts for heavy users.

Conservation efforts were so successful, they had to increase the cost of the water to meet the operating expenses of the water system because they weren't selling enough. They also removed the subsidies for low-flow toilets because the program was too successful.

and sometimes surprisingly difficult to deal with.

In our town we instituted a pay by the bag trash program in the early 1990's. You had to pay $1 for each specially purchased 39 gallon trash bag, but curbside recycling was free. After about 3 years they had to raise the per bag fee to $1.40, as we were no longer sending enough trash to the incinerator. The Southeaster Connecticut Resource Recovery Agency (a quasi-government entity) that operated the central incinerator raised our per ton tipping fee.

It seems that we had the highest recycling rate per household in Southeastern Connecticut, and had diverted enough of the waste stream to make a sizable impact on the amount of trash we sent to be burned.

Seems we did the job too well, and had to pay the price. The per ton tipping fee was based on a minimum amount a trash per month, set by contract, and we had stopped meeting it.

The article title sounds like an exaggeration.

Here in Colorado, lawn irrigation accounts for only 5% of total water use. About 5% for other human use: household, industrial, municipal. 90% is used for agriculture. So at least in Colorado, if one completely eliminated lawns the water savings would be only 5%. I believe these percentages are pretty typical of most western states.

A lot of the area around LA should be desert, but they use so much water that's it's not.

Never mind... :hippie:

Not suburban yards.

I'm in the very slow process of replacing every freaking blade of grass on my property.

Despite the fact that I care for 6 1/2 acres of lawn. Watering the grass is what rain is for.