SoylentNews

Las Vegas’s New Strategy for Tackling Drought – Banning ‘Useless Grass’

posted by janrinok on Thursday June 10 2021, @08:04PM   
from the get-off-my-lawn! dept.

upstart writes:

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.

---

Original Submission

• Re:lawn fascism (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 11 2021, @07:30AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 11 2021, @07:30AM (#1144198)

  Result: the atavistic urge for green, fancy pastures to show how rich and well-organised they wanted to be seen to be.

  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]

  From Georgia to California, Texas to Colorado, the lawn became the verdant incarnation of postwar capitalism, spreading like food coloring in water and turning the national landscape a deep shade of green. Climatic and soil conditions were brushed aside as developers insisted on growing grass in the most improbable of places. In 1967, entrepreneurs even expanded a nine-hole golf course aptly named “Furnace Creek” to eighteen holes, building square in the middle of Death Valley, where temperatures can reach as high as 134 degrees.

  And to keep these lawns in check, a burst in lawn-mower sales brought the manicuring of America to new heights. People bought 139,000 mowers in 1946; 1.2 million a mere five years later; and a stunning 4.2 million in 1959. As one critic noted in 1961, “the recalcitrant lawn and the odious foundation planting are forever with us from Florida to Oregon — a sacred cow, which we feel compelling to have and hold at any sacrifice.”

  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?

  Parent