Say Goodbye to Lawns in Drying U.S. West

Mark Marlowe, who directs the water supply for fast-growing Castle Rock, a Denver suburb, has a dim view of lawns. Irrigating grass in summer consumes 40 percent of Castle Rock’s water. And unlike water used indoors, outdoor water cannot be recycled.

Marlowe is not reticent in articulating his disdain. Earlier this spring, he told a group of Colorado legislators, “I think of grass in Colorado as an invasive species — something we want to get rid of.”

In drawing a new battle line for providing water in his city of 80,000 residents, four times as many as in 2000, Marlowe is candidly attacking a residential amenity now viewed as an impairment that can be eliminated. “America has adopted grass,” Marlowe told the group. “We’ve done an amazing job of making the average person feel like if you don’t have a beautiful green Kentucky bluegrass lawn and a big mower, you haven’t made it in this country. It’s crazy.”

By no means is Marlowe’s attack on grass isolated. Water managers and elected officials across the American West are trying to undo that crazy as they reckon with the region’s existential confrontation: how to supply ever scarcer water to some of the nation’s fastest growing cities (Denver, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Austin, San Antonio) and their even faster-growing outer-ring suburbs (Queen Creek, Arizona; Castle Rock, Colorado; Georgetown, Texas; Herriman, Utah). How, they ask, should a dry-region city grow? Or should steps be taken to limit growth?

HOTSPOTS H2O: Day Zero Threatens Uruguay’s Capital

In Uruguay, a mounting crisis is unfolding as ‘Day Zero’ – when the public water supply is depleted – draws closer in Montevideo.

On May 31 the National Administration of State Sanitary Works (OSE) announced that, without significant rainfall, the city of Montevideo would run out of water by June 22. The capital city of 1.4 million residents has plunged into uncertainty, triggering demonstrations.

Desperate officials are taking extraordinary measures in response. The OSE is alleviating dependence on the country’s largest freshwater reserve, the Paso Severino, by adding salt water from the River Plate estuary into the public water supply.

From the Archives: 

Tax Incentives Find New Purpose for Conserving Water in American West

The San Luis Valley, a high desert farming region in southern Colorado, is a land of daunting natural constraints, especially its scarce water reserves. Pragmatic ingenuity is being applied here to overcome them, including a new easement program that uses federal and state tax benefits to conserve groundwater.

In November, Ron Bowman, owner of the 1,900-acre Peachwood Farms, signed Colorado’s first groundwater conservation easement. The landmark legal agreement enables Bowman to gain a substantial tax credit based on the value of 2,000 acre-feet of water he used annually. In exchange Bowman is prohibited from pumping groundwater to irrigate his fields.

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