L.A. Offers Pay for Lawn Removal
As recently noted in the LA Times Blog, Los Angeles is offering homeowners up to $2,000 to replace their lawns with a sustainable landscape. Other cities such as Las Vegas have done this aggressively. In the blog, it is noted that Las Vegas has removed enough lawns to save 7 billion gallons of water a year, or about one-tenth of their annual water supply. Closer to home, Aurora has had such a program for years offering $1 per square foot for turf that is removed, the same as LA. While I don’t know how successful the program has been overall, I have worked with several HOA’s to reduce the turfgrass they have, and create more appealing communities in the process.
So when is Fort Collins and other Northern Colorado communities going to do the same thing? We keep preaching about water conservation, xeriscape, etc., but no money where the mouth is. Also, other communities such as Aurora and Castle Rock have more restrictions on creating water thirsty landscapes in the first place. When is Northern Colorado going to catch up? Did you know, that in the engineering standards for road design in Larimer County, which Fort Collins and Loveland use as well, it actually requires turf grass to be planted in the parkway strips? This is non-sense. Time to get on the bandwagon and really pay attention to this stuff before the next drought hits.
August 12th, 2009 at 10:31 am
We’re relatively new to Fort Collins—two years last spring—and have wondered about all the extensive lawns. I wish we could eliminate the small front lawn we have but until we have control of the HOA (the builder does now), I don’t see much hope.
Much of our lawn died over the winter and the replacement sod still looks sad. The backyard, planted to be relatively xeric with perennials and shrubs, looks fine. Of course, all that rain in June helped lots and means I don’t have to water as regularly as I did last summer.
I’m glad to know that others agree with us that lawns make little sense in this climate.
August 12th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Connie,
A few years back, the City of Fort Collins passed an ordinance that overrides HOA covenants. Basically this ordinance that prohibits HOA’s from stopping someone wanting to xeriscape, and eliminated minimum turf requirements. Of course, the HOA can still dictate minimum plant coverage/ quantity requirements, but they cannot require you to plant turf grass, and they cannot prevent you from planting a water saving landscape. Of course, this assumes you are within the city limits. Hope this helps.