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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: 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]