Unfortunately, simply ripping out a lawn and replacing it with drought resistant plants doesn’t automatically mean a water savings. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for ripping out lawns. I have removed plenty. However, the research coming in isn’t showing a universally large water savings. A couple reasons for this have been excessive planting density, and cultural watering habits. I know that I have had an exceedingly difficult time getting people to water drought resistant landscapes properly. Even people that should know better want to chronically overwater. This is why you see results where water use goes up when the lawn is removed and I’m not even going to start with overwatering vegetable gardens which need as much water as a fescue lawn typically. Here is a UCR study on ‘cash for grass’.
I assumed that, with this being an American News Story, that the Flint, Michigan solution would have been the one preferred by the well and truly lobbied politicians. This is a nice turn up for the books.
I still think it’s being overly optimistic to use that phrase. Upon reading the article and finding that “LA’s high-tech, thoughtful water management” is not something in actual existence at the moment, it’s one median that could be replicated (what it would cost to go around digging up medians being a rather important untalked about detail). Better headline: “L.A.: high tech, thoughtful water management could be cause for cautious optimism”. Cost is hand waved away with “L.A. and San Diego have big piles of money…” Ugh. That money comes from actual people who have to pay it.
One of my biggest beefs with Californians is a tendency to just make grand pronouncements and then act as if figuring out how to pay for it is somehow an affront to their dignity, as if it’s just a matter of going out back to pick the money tree.
That sounds like the whole internets.
Greenwashing hype in my opinion, when 4/5 of the water in CA is used in thirsty agriculture. For example creating artificial rice paddies in the Central Valley to undercut rice production in wet areas of the East is insane. Flogging homeowners to save water when farming throws it away is simply theater.
Here’s some villains to that respect
This thread gives a good perspective on that sort of thing:
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