Las Vegas's new strategy for tackling drought – banning 'useless grass':
A new Nevada law will outlaw about 40% of the grass in the Las Vegas area in an effort to conserve water amid a drought that is drying up the region's primary water source: the Colorado River.
Other cities and states around the US have enacted temporary bans on lawns that must be watered, but legislation signed Friday by the state's governor, Steve Sisolak, makes Nevada the first in the nation to enact a permanent ban on certain categories of grass. Sisolak said last week that anyone flying into Las Vegas viewing the "bathtub rings" that delineate how high Lake Mead's water levels used to be can see that conservation is needed.
"It's incumbent upon us for the next generation to be more conscious of conservation and our natural resources, water being particularly important," he said.
The ban targets what the Southern Nevada Water Authority calls "non-functional turf". It applies to grass that virtually no one uses at office parks, street medians and the entrances to housing developments. It excludes single-family homes, parks and golf courses.
The measure will require the replacement of about 8 sq miles (21 sq km) of grass in the metro Las Vegas area. By ripping it out, water officials estimate the region can reduce annual water consumption by 15% and save about 14 gallons (53 liters) per person a day in a region with a population of about 2.3 million.
If you want grass, go live where grass grows naturally.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @08:21PM (9 children)
>> If you want grass, go live where grass grows naturally.
Last time we did that, the Indians got slaughtered wholesale.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @08:31PM (2 children)
Somehow, I don't think that's the *only* way you can move to somewhere grassy.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @08:42PM
Just more Ｊews demanding greater sacrifices from Goyim while they buy up the property and construct multi-story housing for illiterate future Democrat voters, as well as the additional 50 immediate family members of each.
(Score: 3, Touché) by driverless on Friday June 11 2021, @12:00PM
I've never had problems finding grass in Vegas. I think it's grown in northern California.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @08:38PM (3 children)
I think we slaughtered more Indians for gold, than for grass.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Thursday June 10 2021, @08:50PM (2 children)
I wouldn't bet on that. At least, if you include grass for cows/sheep, etc. as well as just the land itself. Native Americans by and large, didn't have such a sense of ownership of the land as the Europeans that came over. Maybe in most cases, the concept was pretty foreign to them.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @09:13PM
Oh, THAT grass.
So, what are they calling it these days?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 11 2021, @01:20PM
Really? Then why did Indian tribes go to war with each other? Resources have always mattered.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Aegis on Friday June 11 2021, @02:33PM
Uh oh! That sounds like CRITICAL RACE THEORY!
Quick, ban him! Censor him! Cancel him!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 11 2021, @07:08PM
We sure do have a lot of Mongoloids in the country if they were "genocided wholesale". We should have kicked them out of North America, and killed any and all who resisted. If anything, Whites have been way too nice and are now down right suicidal.
https://nationaljusticeparty.com/ [nationaljusticeparty.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @08:37PM (4 children)
found this on wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeriscaping [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @08:41PM
also, i dunno about your gas compressor, but my air conditioner does produce some condensation indoors that has to be piped out.
maybe they can use sweat from gamblers in the red?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by anubi on Friday June 11 2021, @10:20AM (2 children)
I am in Southern California and consider my city basically to be an artificial green paradise carved out of a desert, although my city gets on me from time to time for not watering enough. The State wants me to conserve water, but the city wants everything green... Even if its plastic grass. I just want to trade my lawn mower for pruning hooks and a pole saw. I like trees.
I have taken to touring vacant land nearby where nobody waters anything, to look for which plants are happy there. Then I will take a cutting from those I find attractive and propagate it to my yard. I have several wild plants growing now, just as green as can be, albeit I don't know what to call them.
Occasionally, neighbors see them and I invite them to take a cutting and do the same.
I have the android "leaf snap" app, which identifies my favorite find as an ash tree. Its an evergreen, but kinda pithy stems. Another stray just started growing like a little weed when I first moved here. I let it be, and today its a rather nice tree in my back yard.
Little by little, Nature is repopulating my yard with plants that like it here, just as it is.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 11 2021, @07:04PM (1 child)
that is very smart (in another universe it would be common-sense:) )!
surely something "natural" could also be edible in your case (even if just for bees)?
it seems, that there is a lot of "food waste" "in the forest where the tree falls and nobody looks" and whatever was first pushed up and then falls down (and rots!) seems to have "magical properties" for future immediate environment development (maybe it's the sugars?)...
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday June 11 2021, @09:40PM
Yes... I have a loquat tree, some guava tree/bushes ( almost invasive! They make lots of seedlings! ) , assorted citrus, and some sort of thick tiny leaved succulent ground cover that covers itself in bright purple blooms. Covered with bees.
Just got some ivy/vines started in a eucalyptus tree i had to sacrifice because its roots were starting to wreck my neighbors concrete driveway. But i left the trunk in place and mounted three lighting globes where the three main branches used to be. I am trying to get that vine started up the trunk.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday June 10 2021, @08:40PM (7 children)
Why don't they just plant trees and put any new landscaping over where the old landscaping used to be?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @08:44PM
date palms help with indigestion?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @09:25PM
You want to kill JOBS!
It does seem like they could just say, "no watering, and if it dies replace it with better stuff."
(Score: 5, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 10 2021, @09:57PM (4 children)
Trees may or may not need less water than a lawn - but they still need a lot of water.
https://greenarborists.com/much-water-trees-need/ [greenarborists.com]
Note that running 60 gallons of water onto arid ground isn't going to provide 60 gallons of water to the tree in question. Evaporation and leaching is going to lose a lot of water, even if you're careful to avoid runoff.
https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/science/evapotranspiration-and-water-cycle?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects [usgs.gov]
40,000 gallons of water per year, in a region that only gets about an inch of rain per year. That doesn't really look sustainable.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 11 2021, @02:47AM
Yep, that's why native plants are usually preferable. You don't have to water them much once they're established. In this case, probably a bunch of succulents and whatever trees have adapted to live with such little rain.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Reziac on Friday June 11 2021, @02:54AM (2 children)
There are a lot of desert-adapted trees, as well as desert-adapted grass (sheep fescue does well, and makes a nice lawn that doesn't need mowing). And one way to prevent needless evaporation is to shade the soil... with trees.
And the way to reduce plant transpiration is to... increase CO2, because that is WHY those spiracles are open so much -- trying to suck up enough CO2 to avoid starvation. Which has the unfortunate side effect that more H2O escapes. (See also NASA's images showing that Earth has been generally greening, and guess why.)
Native desert juniper forest (this is land that has never been cleared, and has survived many years of drought):
https://goo.gl/maps/iVNkRMNqufq1dRcv9 [goo.gl]
Various more-conventional shade trees also do well, once started. Notably Italian stone pines will survive where nothing else does, in areas that may measure annual rainfall in fractions of an inch. Here's a volunteer stone pine (note the dead juniper to the left, which died about 15 years ago):
https://goo.gl/maps/YKKC9GpHHdk27daw7 [goo.gl]
Turn around and look south, and you'll see some Turkish pines that were planted in the 1930s (not irrigated in living memory).
Since I'm in the neighborhood: Honey locust. To the west, the windbreak is saltcedar (I used to live next to 'em). To the north, Siberian elms that L.A. County failed to kill with their tree topping program:
https://goo.gl/maps/Rx4QuzszDFgmF1R27 [goo.gl]
None of these get anything but the scant rainfall.
Now, take a look at the satellite view of Las Vegas. Private lawns are small and usually already bordering on brown. The primary offenders for "needless grass" are golf courses and the outdoor sports complex. Want to bet whether they'll be required to let their grass brown out?
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 5, Informative) by srobert on Friday June 11 2021, @03:21AM (1 child)
The golf courses in Vegas have already removed a lot of unnecessary grass in recent years. Compare satellite photos of Vegas golf courses 20 years ago and now. And much of the Las Vegas golf course irrigation is achieved using recycled water. That's water extracted from the sewer system that has been treated for non-potable purposes. If you ever see the water company installing purple pipes that's what they're for.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday June 11 2021, @03:31AM
Good to know. Frankly that's water that would otherwise be wasted, so why not put it on something green and growing?
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Thursday June 10 2021, @09:18PM (8 children)
If you decide to live in a desert having a grass lawn is probably the height of luxury, and stupidity. Just tax it to death, sure some will still do it but the cost should be extreme, and people will rip them out. Imagine all the time and energy saved on not having to mow the lawn, or money so you dont have to pay you illegal Mexican gardener, any more.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday June 10 2021, @10:03PM (5 children)
I grew up in Las Vegas until age 14. (60's and part of 70's) Then my family moved to a midwest state to plant a church. Also: culture shock. But in hindsight I got to learn about a whole different way of life where the economy was geared around agriculture.
When I was a kid, lawns were everywhere. I remember watering the lawn. Mowing the lawn when I was old enough. Mowing neighbors' lawns for $5. Trees were everywhere.
In 2010 my company decided to have its annual Christmas party in Vegas instead of other venues. So I got to visit there again. Boy am I glad we moved when we did! I got to look at the houses I lived in. The schools I went to. The church I grew up in. The strip had no resemblance to what it once was. The organized crime was gone (or seemed gone) and everything had gone legit because corporations were more profitable and legal.
Now everything is rock "lawns". Palm trees (I guess they don't ask for much water). No shade anywhere.
I did some research, looked at videos, etc. Wow is Lake Mead low in water level! I fear for all of the Southwest states. Nevada, Arizona, parts of California, New Mexico, etc.
Imagine if Hoover Dam one day cannot produce electricity.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by krishnoid on Thursday June 10 2021, @10:07PM (1 child)
Bummer, right? [youtu.be]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday June 10 2021, @11:26PM
Yeah, today it looks like Disneyland [youtube.com]
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Thursday June 10 2021, @10:25PM (2 children)
Couldn't a lot of those issues just be explained by the large influx of people? A hundred years or so ago Las Vegas barely even existed and today there is like 600k people there? Year by year they just urbanize more and more. The town(s) clearly wasn't made for this. It's not that there are not large desert cities around the world but they are either shitholes or next to or close to large bodies of water of some kind be it sea/ocean/rivers or some gigantic aquifer. So what the hell happened to the Colorado and/or Lake Mead? It can't all just be drought or to hot, isn't it just to many people grabbing water from the same source?
Still a "rock lawn" makes sense in a desert, if you need something green grow cacti or something. It's not just for desert folks, my father ripped out part of the lawn a few years ago cause he was tired of spending all the time cutting and maintaining it. There is still a patch so he can sit outside and feel the grass and it can look nice but it's very small and it's totally square and with no objects in it so it can all be managed by the robo-cutter. All things that are not plants and trees was replaced by gravel and I think it looks quite nice. It's not green but it looks nice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 11 2021, @05:58AM
Yes, but here in Seattle we had hundreds of thousands move to the region and still wound up net negative versus our water consumption from 20 years earlier through conservation efforts. That's both total and per capita reduction, so they shouldn't be up that much just due to increases in population alone. It's presumably the new residents expecting to waste water like the previous inhabitants and the previous inhabitants also not cutting back to something reasonable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 12 2021, @06:15PM
mostly mexican invaders
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Friday June 11 2021, @03:02AM (1 child)
Depends entirely on your grass. Sheep fescue (which is native) survives just fine on scant desert rainfall. It'll go dormant when it gets too dry, but about half the year you'll have an attractive lawn that doesn't need mowing, because it never gets more than ankle-high.
But yeah, adjusting water rates to discourage waste would be a lot more sensible than just decreeing that by damn you're not allowed to have grass. (Never mind the golf course, that's none of your business.)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 11 2021, @06:01AM
You can also just give out rebates and free water saving showerhead along with educating the users, you'd be surprised how much water can be saved just by educating users and giving away free water saving items.
Pairing that with increased rates would likely be a good idea to avoid the paradox of efficiency.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by srobert on Thursday June 10 2021, @09:18PM
While the regulation may be new, there's nothing new about the strategy of encouraging Nevada residents to remove turf and replace it with desert landscaping. That has been going on for decades. SNWA even paid residents by the square foot to convert turf to desert landscaping. Total water consumption is lower than it was when the Las Vegas valley's population was about half its current size. If you're in Vegas and want to have fun and learn about water conservation and desert landscaping spend some time at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @09:21PM (1 child)
dave's not here, man.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday June 11 2021, @11:43AM
That grass isn't useless.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Funny) by bzipitidoo on Thursday June 10 2021, @10:42PM (7 children)
Useless doesn't go far enough. I have always found it ridiculous that so much effort has been wasted on making grass grow no matter how unsuited the local conditions are. Have read this idea that people like grass short because that makes it impossible for snakes to hide.
One time I went to this "Bike with the Mayor" event in the city of Grand Prairie, Texas, shortly after they'd become infamous for jailing a resident, Rick Yoes, for not mowing the lawn. I asked one of the participants what he thought of lawn care, and he said basically that a good neighbor is a person who keeps their lawn mowed. I said that God makes the grass grow, and asked if that makes God a bad neighbor. His response: "What the F did you say to me?" His wife was nearby, and exclaimed his name in shock. I dropped well back, to get out of his sight. At the end of the event, I saw him from a distance with a very sour look on his face. Maybe ashamed he reached for the profanity so quickly on such slight provocation, though if he wanted to apologize, he sure didn't try very hard.
Obligatory: God and St. Francis on lawns: https://richsoil.com/lawn/god.jsp [richsoil.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @11:33PM (3 children)
I believe that it's really a different driver:
In England, for a long time (including when the USA was a colony) much of the national wealth was based around wool. A well-cropped pasture was the sign of wealth, with sheep nibbling down the grass, or mowers scything it down for hay.
People got used to it, and when they moved from rural areas into suburbs, they wanted to emulate the swell folks with their meadows and pastures. They weren't about to keep much in the way of livestock, and they weren't going to be making hay, very few of them were deeply into kitchen gardening in the world of the supermarket, but they didn't want to give up their fancy lawns. Result: the atavistic urge for green, fancy pastures to show how rich and well-organised they wanted to be seen to be.
It's all kinds of messed up, but you can actually trace the fashion for grass back to that society.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 11 2021, @07:30AM
Oh no, don't tell me it has something to do with British. This is a purely American creation in Baby-boomers to sell more chemicals for Levittown suburbs.
https://longreads.com/2019/07/18/american-green/ [longreads.com]
But then ads are so helpful to make right choices, especially in those days with no need for any restraint or regulation.
https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-top-10-most-dangerous-ads/ [collectorsweekly.com]
America's psychotic obsession with lawns has been created by Americans to sell more shit to Americans. You reap what you sow?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday June 11 2021, @12:48PM (1 child)
That history is definitely wrong: British people didn't for the most part move from rural areas to suburbs. British urbanization was the direct result of the Enclosure Acts of the late 1700's and early 1800's that forced what had been the rural population centered in small villages to become the urban industrial working class. Early industrial Britain was extremely cramped and urban, because the only option for poorer people to get around was to walk, so they either slept in their workplace or in ridiculously-overcrowded (by modern standards) boarding houses or tiny apartments within walking distance of their jobs.
Suburbs came much much later, with the development of commuter rail lines and later cars.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 11 2021, @06:23PM
You're completely missing the point. British fashions didn't drive suburbia. They did however drive things like the notion of what a formal garden should look like, what the appearance of wealth would be and so on. Even chest-thumping american industrialists were surprisingly anglophile when it came to their markers of wealth, and even through the gilded age, inter-war period and so on, the fashion for how fancy houses and big gardens should look was heavily driven by cross-fertilisation from the UK. That then trickled down to people in the USA when they were trying to make suburbs work for people in the USA who didn't know a damn thing about the wool trade, but did know that swell folks had green lawns and driveways.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 11 2021, @07:11AM (1 child)
Amen to that. Here in Germany, the grass is cut 2-3x per year. In June and sometimes in August and then as part of winter cleanup. As for what grows in front of people's houses, the taller and wilder, the better.
Very few nuts here with idiot lawns. And when you go to the park, you can smell the grass along with 100s of thousands of flowers in it.
Except one has nothing to do with the latter. Snakes hide in holes in dry terrain. The idiot lawns of America require the grass to grow and idiots to keep mowing them every week or more often. And then actually not to step on these idiot lawns for fear of ruining their look. Also, then you have these idiots bitching that rabbits or deer eat their garden.. Who knew that they don't eat grass? Even chickens don't like these idiot lawns.
And you were 100% correct. They do not appreciate God's creation like a proper pasture.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday June 11 2021, @04:16PM
2-3x per year?? What sanity! Wish I could do that here in the US, but when I try it, I have the Home Owners' Association, the city, and the neighbors all giving me hell about it. The family too, but they take a different tack. They don't care that the grass isn't mown, they are afraid of trouble, and want to cave like a wet noodle to the pressure to conform. You ought to see the sort of letter the city sends for an unmown lawn. Full of highly prejudicial language about "weeds" and "vermin", and exhortations that we take "pride" in our neighborhoods, and how mean it is for you, homeowner, to Lower the Property Values of your entire neighborhood through your Neglect. Letting the grass grow is criminal- it's Creating a Fire Hazard and Sheltering Vermin. Why do you hate your neighbors, huh, huh? And they cap it with bullying threats that aren't entirely accurate. Say they can fine you up to $2000 per day that your lawn is out of compliance, while failing to mention various mitigating circumstances, like that you might want to grow a garden. Indeed, gardening forced officialdom to back off a bit.
A strange, bigoted euphemism is what Israel means by "mowing the lawn". In a way, it's not too far off from the US. Only, different targets for the prejudice.
(Score: 1) by js290 on Friday June 11 2021, @01:10PM
"Folks, This Ain't Normal" Joel Salatin at Wanderlust's Speakeasy - "Grow food not lawns" [bit.ly]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @11:25PM
Replace the lawn with green (or red) pebbles - makes your house look like lego model, but it saves not only water but also upkeep - don't need no mowing.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Thursday June 10 2021, @11:29PM (1 child)
exception for gold courses HAHAHAHAHAH
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 11 2021, @12:17AM
Numbnut, tourism is probably the biggest industry in NV.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 11 2021, @02:01AM
Getting rid of grass gets rid of lawnmowers, fertilizers and herbicides yet most HOA want to see grass
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Friday June 11 2021, @04:13AM (1 child)
Wallace Stegner is a good writer about the American West. He points out that except for the corner in the Northwest, it is defined by aridity. He prescribes living in harmony with it and finding beauty without the color green.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday June 11 2021, @03:06PM
I grew up in the northern Rockies. The West is arid in parts, but it has as many parts that are green, so Stegner's assertion strikes me as overbroad. South Central Utah with the Dixie National Forest area is emerald. Colorado is a large swath of green except for a corner in the northwest near the Wyoming border and the eastern approach, but there you're really talking about the Midwest as it's an extension of the Great Plains. California north of Sacramento is thickly forested (including the Red Woods National Park). New Mexico from about the Los Alamos plateau and Bandoleer National Monument and north is also green and forested.
There are also many watersheds that are fine. There are many rivers throughout the region that are excellent for trout fishing, BTW.
I suspect what's at work with perceptions of the West is heavily colored by a perspective coming out of Southern California, which drinks the Colorado river dry it's so thirsty.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday June 11 2021, @04:47PM
Why go to all the trouble of ripping out the unnecessary grass? Why not just stop watering it?
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Friday June 11 2021, @08:11PM
I'd like to know what portion of the water from this reservoir is used by e.g. residences, agriculture and industry with a breakdown of major consumers. That information would inform my opinion. I'd also like to know what they do with their wastewater.
It feels, with the caveat that I'm uninformed, like this is a good opportunity for water reclamation.
(Score: 1) by j-beda on Friday June 11 2021, @09:53PM
As I recall, many southwest communities have residential water pricing that is significantly lower than the prices for places like Seattle or Michigan. This seems silly.