Behind LA's new and improved xeriscape rebate program

"Cash for grass" isn't new - cities from Las Vegas to Austin to Scottsdale pay people to rip up their lawns. Los Angeles has been offering rebates for residential turf removal since 2009, albeit with low participation - only 848 LA Water customers have signed up for the deal. But LA has ramped up its program with renewed zeal, in the wake of mounting pressure on Southern California to reduce its Colorado River water imports

Photo credit: http://ow.ly/n2e8H

.When the Colorado River Compact was drawn up in 1922, California was by far developing the fastest. In fact, the state used well beyond its share of allocated water, dipping into Arizona's portion while the latter slowly developed. However, California's era of borrowed water is coming to a close. John Fleck of the Albuquerque Journal wrote an excellent piece on the ongoing politics behind the Colorado River Compact, in which he states the inevitability that California must "reduce its consumption from the 5 million-plus annual acre feet it had been taking to the 4.4 million acre feet allotted by the Law of the River."

Cut to present day when, when Southern California cities plan to "cut their water imports by more than 40 billion gallons a year." This is no doubt a combination of the exorbitant cost of importing out-of-basin water, and the knowledge that soon almost a million acre-feet of that water may no longer be available to California. In order to meet water demand, many cities will instead be turning to groundwater.

However, water from aquifers is not a silver bullet. First of all, if you withdraw faster than the recharge rate, you deplete the aquifer. Since LA diverts so much of its precious surface water, the recharge rate is artificially slowed, while at the same time the region will be pumping more out of the ground. This does not equate to sustainability. Second, when aquifers deplete, subsidence can occur, a process where the land actually settles downward to fill in the void left by the groundwater. In extreme circumstances, this can cause sinkholes. In more mundane cases, it can threaten the structural integrity of buildings and roads.

So the real answer is, Los Angeles must conserve. It has always been one of the more ludicrous environments in which to build a city, much less one populated by expansive, green lawns. Los Angeles only came into existence by sucking dry the entire Owens River Valley and transporting the water hundreds of miles through the desert.

In his piece for Stanford's Bill Lane Center for the American West, Fleck writes about Stein's Law, whereby, "if something cannot go on forever, it will stop." So it makes sense that, once other states in the Colorado River threatened to cut California off, Los Angeles is ramping up its "Cash for Grass" rebate program. 848 participating households just aren't going to cut it - the region needs to see water savings on a large scale.

Because up to 70% of water from LA's water utility goes to outdoor use, the lawn is the most logical place to start. Increasing the amount offered per square foot of lawn removed from $1.50 to $2 may not seem like much, but combined with a vigorous public awareness campaign, it could move LA closer to an example of water sustainability.

It's happening before our eyes

Manitou Springs, an idyllic community in the mountains west of Colorado Springs, made news today as mudslides swept away cars. The area is experiencing flash flooding, a result of being located close to the burn zones of last year's Waldo Canyon and this year's Black Forest fires. What the headline didn't say is that this was a concrete result of global warming.

Each fire was a state record in destruction at the time it occurred. Each fire was a "megafire," the type of forest fire we have now become accustomed to seeing. Megafires are a result of the combination of fire suppression, which has provided dense, ample fuels, and climate change, which has produced hotter temperatures and drought.

Flash floods are a consequence of megafire burn zones. In ordinary wildland fires, where the cycle has not been disturbed by human intervention, fires rip through so quickly, and with such moderate strength, that many trees and shrubs are left standing. With megafires, an overabundance of fuels causes the fire to burn too hot to leave anything standing, in essence stripping the ground of all vegetation. Without any cover to speak of, these burn scars absorb little water, creating devastating flash floods. Rain will rip through the burn scar, and even a minimal amount will accumulate into forceful runoff.

Climate change + fire suppression = megafires = no groundcover = flash floods = mudslides.


Photo credit: http://ow.ly/mQVs0

Disrupting forest ecology

NBC recently published a headline article on the root cause of the Colorado Wildfires. While the explosiveness of many fires in Colorado has been correctly attributed to beetle kill, this is really only a partial truth. Climate change is the real culprit behind both wildfires and beetle kill. The two are merely consequences of our warming forests, and the effects are likely to intensify in the future.

This is by no means groundbreaking news, but the fact that this idea is becoming mainstream is encouraging. As climate change becomes a widely accepted fact, we must acknowledge that our weather events are no longer exclusively "acts of God." What's really making wildfires worse is human distortion of natural cycles. 

Climate change creates ideal conditions for wildfire through a variety of factors. Drought weakens the trees, and stands that survive are more likely to burn in a fire (as opposed to in the past, when healthy trees withstood smaller, cyclical fires.. Drier air and hotter temperatures strengthen fires' spread. There is more dead vegetation, which is also drier, creating an overabundance of fuel. Water-starved trees cannot fight off bark beetles by producing sap, and fall more quickly to attack. Milder winters no longer kill the beetles in a deep freeze before the next season.

Furthermore, we've disrupted forest ecology through fire suppression. Trees have not only been weakened by drought and infested with beetles, but they've grown much denser than historical norms, allowing beetles to jump easily from tree to tree.

Bark beetles are natural, and their cycle is an important part of forest rejuvenation. But humans have distorted forest ecology to the point that the beetles are no longer in check, and the consequences are evident.

Today we're experiencing the consequences of climate change, beetle kill, and fire suppression all at once - like opening the Pandora's Box of wildfires.

A forest devastated by beetle kill in Colorado
Photo Credit: http://ow.ly/mqqzW

Grass values

This is a picture I took of a grassy curb in Downtown Denver, near my office. Sherman Street is peppered with sprinklers, but not all homeowners are diligent about watering their lawns.

This is one particular curb that sits in direct sunlight, unshaded by trees. A month ago, during rainy May, this patch was green and dewy. Today, it is shriveled up, after only a few weeks of the strong Colorado sun.

This begs the question - why do we try so hard to grow green grass where it doesn't belong? If this is what it looks like without a daily downpour from a sprinkler, is it really worth the effort? Not to mention the water, for a purely aesthetic feature.

Green grass is more than just a status symbol. It has become part of our cultural identity, American as apple pie. Could their be a more patriotic activity than mowing one's lawn? But turfgrass's value in our society has reached the point where it now threatens our environmental sustainability. Is it worth it, in water-stressed states, to keep our lawns green while our reservoirs dwindle?

Are dams a futile business?

California is launching the biggest dam removal in state history, returning the Carmel River in Northern California to (nearly) its original free-flowing state.

While this is a victory for wildlife and the riparian ecosystem, the reason behind this dam removal isn't so altruistic. 100 years of silt, that would normally have been carried to the ocean, has built up behind the dam, rendering it virtually unusable. Furthermore, California's Division on Dam Safety has declared the dam "seismically unsafe," meaning the communities below would be at great risk for dam failure and flooding if an earth quake were to occur.

Dam on the Carmel River. Photo credit: http://ow.ly/mghsT

The US has 84,000 dams, many of which were built in the mid-20th century in a rat race between the Bureau of Reclamation and Army Corps of Engineers. Some dams were built to enable large-scale population growth in arid territory, yet disturbingly, many were built simply to build more dams. Undammed rivers became viewed as a "waste," and we lost sight of the ecological purpose of a free-flowing stream. 

More dangerously, we saw a duty to populate regions that without massive, expensive, and probably unsustainable water projects, could not support more than a dusty little town. Marc Reisner in his monumental book Cadillac Desert, a scathing history of American water projects, chronicles this phenomenon, and it is well worth a read.

Reisner predicted our dams would eventually silt up and lose functionality. While humans can divert and disrupt natural hydrography, and perform stunning feats of engineering, it can only last for so long. 

John Sabo, a water researcher at Arizona State University, and his team conducted a study to verify Resiner's claims from 1986, the year Cadillac Desert was published. Though Reisner based his theories on history and logic, rather than data, Sabo's study found the claims to be sound. Reisner, who died in 2000, was perhaps the most clairvoyant environmental historian in our time.

What we have failed to take into account is the duration for which man can outsmart nature. We can build pipelines and dams, and irrigate the desert, but we cannot violate the laws of the ecosystem. A river must continue to the sea.

Inconsistencies in Texas

One of my favorite things to complain about is that cities don't realize how much cheaper it is conserve and retrofit rather than find new water (i.e. build a pipeline). It may seem expensive to pay residents to xeriscape and install low-flow toilets, but that's nothing compared to the task of securing more water, in a more water-stressed economy in the future, because you didn't give people incentives to conserve. It's like eating a diet of fast food instead of whole vegetables and grains because they are more expensive in the short term - heart disease and obesity will end up costing you a lot more.

Photo credit: http://ow.ly/mfdxI

So it was refreshing to see the progress San Antonio has made, according to a piece by Sadhbh Walshe in The Guardian Professional. The city apparently realized the wisdom launching a city-wide toilet replacement program, installing water-efficient appliances in order to avoid building another pipeline further down the road. However, on the whole, Texas is still trying to win with a decidedly backward attitude about water - taking other states to court to fight over dwindling supplies, rather than looking at consumption within its borders.

Fighting for scraps

Are we finally reaching the limits of human development in the deserts of the West?

With the Colorado River Basin already over-allocated, groundwater isn't much of a solution either. In many parts of the country, we've withdrawn so much that we've actually lowered the water table. Wells that once seemed inexhaustible are now churning up sand, and depletion has far exceeded the recharge rate. In fact, we're actually further limiting recharge by diverting our streams to man-made infrastructures instead of allowing water to trickle back under the ground.

Consequently, each water project seems more doomed. It's hard to sell the benefits of finding a little more water, when it has become increasingly clear that in the long run we need a miracle. Nevada's proposal for mine an aquifer along the Utah border has many residents worried, at least the ones who have thought a few years down the line.

Photo credit: http://ow.ly/mfbo9

Tom Wharton says it well in his editorial in the Salt Lake Tribute this week:

"When are developers and political leaders going to wise up to the fact that perhaps desert cities such as Phoenix, St. George, Las Vegas and, yes, even Salt Lake City may have to eventually limit growth and new home building because there simply isn’t enough water to sustain them? We see that now in Little Cottonwood Canyon where Alta and Salt Lake City are limiting development by not allowing any more water hookups."

Wharton admits his opposition is selfish, as he (and his asthmatic lungs) would prefer not to see the region turn into a Dust Bowl, as it would without its aquifers. But isn't that the point? Conservation will only gain enough momentum when people turn to it out of self-interest. It's about more than aesthetics - when the West Desert can no longer support a growing population without a significant fall in the quality of life, we will know we should have prioritized conservation long ago.