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

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.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.


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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
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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.

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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.

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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.

Learning a lesson about fighting wildfires

Fighting more forest fires will come back to burn us, by Michael Kodas 6/19/13

This is a model for coexisting with, and benefiting from, forest fires. The USFS is still trying to bounce back from a longstanding policy of fire suppression, and this is proof of how misguided that policy was.

"For almost 40 years now, the U.S. Forest Service has been managing the Gila Wilderness according to a “let it burn” policy that allows small, natural fires to thin overgrown forests, getting rid of dead brush and excess timber that can spark a massive conflagration. So when the Whitewater Baldy fire raged through the ponderosa pines last June, it found far less fuel, and therefore had less destructive potential, than it would have in a forest where every previous fire -- no matter how small or harmless -- had been immediately snuffed."

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After the Black Forest Fire last week became the most destructive fire in Colorado history, (the previous record-holder happened only last year in a disturbing trend), people are talking about fire. Colorado has one of the biggest Wildland-Urban Interfaces (WUI) in the country, where such a large population lives in close proximity with the forest. Fires here are a fact of life, and they will destroy property. But they don't have to be this bad.

Fire suppression, as described in Kodas' article, was the order of the day for most of the 20th century. It's another ill-fated example of playing God, much like the effects we are starting to see from a century of damming and diverting our rivers (leading to aquifer depletion, for example). We thought we could outsmart the fires, only to have them come back larger and stronger. Dry fuels and shrubs little the forest floors, having thrived without their natural predator. Now, when a fire starts, it is almost impossible to put out, raging at full force instead of a brief, cleansing burn.

Luckily, there were some forests, such as the Gila Wilderness, that escaped the brunt of this policy, and still burned with manageable regularity. Now, they provide a control for analyzing the effects of fire suppression. The results overwhelmingly favor "let it burn" over fire suppression, for the health and safety of humans in the WUI, as well as the forests themselves. If anyone is keeping track, that's another slam dunk for nature.

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An excellent article article summing up the ecological damages of fire suppression was written Helen Poulos and James Workman, a fire ecologist and former firefighter, respectively, in the Los Angeles Times.

Here's a brief sequence of events -

Without fires, forests grow thick. Fuels build up and trees grow closer together, creating a fire hazard. Extra trees suck up more water, and prevent rain and sunlight from reaching the forest floor and providing nutrients to animals and vegetation below. Removing these "trash trees" would not only provide timber, but release valuable water, benefit wildlife which has suffered from ecosystem alteration, and prevent wildfires from posing such a threat to human life and property.

Manifest California

this is a fascinating bit of history, relevant everywhere but especially to my friends in California. I'm not trying to point out California as a negative example, but share more on an issue that has transfixed me since moving out west. I think many of us have no idea just how much we've altered the natural environment, to squeeze out as much water as possible to support civilization in places where it probably shouldn't belong and might not be able to last.  

__

"Everyone knows there is a desert somewhere in California, but many people believe it is off in some remote corner of the state - the Mojave Desert, Palm Springs, the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. But inhabited California, most of it, is, by strict definition, a semidesert. Los Angeles is drier than Beirut; Sacramento is as dry as the Sahel; San Francisco is just slightly rainier than Chihuahua. About 65 percent of the state receives under twenty inches of precipitation a year. California, which fools visitors into believing it is "lush," is a beautiful fraud.

Actually, San Francisco looks green all year long, if one ignores the rain-starved hills that lie disturbingly beyond its emerald-and-white summer splendor, but this is the second part of of the fraud, the part perpetrated by man. There was not a single tree growing in San Francisco when the first Spanish arrived; it was too dry and windy. Today, Golden Gate Park looks as if Virginia had mated with Borneo, thanks to water brought nearly two hundred miles by tunnel. 

The whole state thrives, even survives, by moving water from where it is, and presumably isn't needed, to where it isn't, and presumably is needed. No other state has done as much to fructify its deserts, make over its flora and fauna, and rearrange the hydrology God gave it. No other place has put as many people where they probably have no business being. There is no place like it anywhere on earth. Thirty-one million people (more than the population of Canada), an economy richer than all but seven nations' in the world, one third of the table food grown in the United States - and none of it remotely conceivable withing the preexisting natural order."

- Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert, 1993

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False confidence

Denver is giddy after a wet May. Streams in the foothills are swollen with snowmelt, and the water level at Clear Creek White Water Park in Golden is "dangerously high," to kayakers' delight. The rolling prairie is impossibly lush, and one need not use a sprinkler to keep the lawn green.

Denver Water announced a few months ago it would implement Stage 2 drought restrictions, before an exceptionally snowy April brought many river basins close to 100%, in terms of average snowpack. Cranky water planners must have been too eager to clamp down on lawn-watering, and did so prematurely.

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Yet within one week of temperatures reaching 90 degrees, browns spots have begun marring lawns across the city. The green foothills will soon return to brown, when summer trades in the rain for unadulterated heat. And the reservoirs, which are only slightly less empty than we originally predicted they would be this spring, will continue to diminish.

A near-average snowpack is not a silver bullet for our water supply. What Colorado needs is an above-average snowpack, just to make up for last summer's drought and depleted reservoirs. And then we need even more snow, to melt into water we are legally obligated to send Nevada, Arizona, and California, in accordance with the Colorado River Compact. And then we need even more snow, to fuel the population growth Colorado will see in the next few decades. And more snow on top of that, to negate the 500,000 acre-foot gap projected for 2050.

A few more raindrops in May just aren't going to cut it. 

Pipelines and band-aids

These "solutions" to Denver's water crisis get crazier and crazier. It's one thing to expect water consumption patterns can continue at the same rate as time goes on. Add population growth to the equation and it's even more laughable. But the idea that we should build a $7 billion, 600-mile pipeline through pristine habitat to allow water wastefulness to continue is a travesty. 

Photo credit: http://ow.ly/mfclO

As Chuck Howe says in his High Country News piece, the real solution "should include greater water conservation in our cities, increased agricultural efficiencies, and a more innovative approach to the operation of our water markets so that the water we have can be reallocated as economic conditions and population change over time."

The water debate draws many parallels to fracking. While everyone agrees we need to wean ourselves off foreign oil, fracking is many environmentalists' greatest fear, and not just because of the pollution, water use, and habitat destruction that accompany extraction. But because it makes us blind to the real solution: changing our consumption. 

We must ask ourselves: is buying a little extra time through water pipelines or fracking wells a wise strategy? It's as if we admit our cities have an expiration date. In the long run, does it really matter if we procure ourselves 100 more years of water, or fuel, if the problem will just come up again when that runs out? We put too much trust in the assumption that future generations will be smarter and more resource-savvy. 

We have been able to get away with driving so much and keeping green lawns in the desert because we are borrowing from our future supplies of oil and water. No matter how long resource will take to run out, if the trajectory of supply and demand will eventually converge it should not be considered a viable solution. We're spending on credit when we should only be trusted with a debit account.

Which type of conservation is effective?

This is a great Q and A with Brian Richter, a freshwater scientist with the Nature Conservancy. He makes some well-needed points about water conservation in major cities in the US, and which steps might actually make a difference.

Richter points out that recycling "gray water," or water that has been used previously for laundry or bathing, to use for lawn irrigation is actually taking that water from the freshwater source. Water that runs through our faucets and returns down the drain actually returns to the source after treatment at a municipal water plant, starting anew in the water cycle. 

However, some water IS lost through use and does not return to the freshwater source. 10 to 20% of water doesn't return to the freshwater source, and that's the water we use for irrigating our green lawns. It gets evaporated, or "depleted," as Richter says.

So while retrofitting your house with water-efficient appliances may reduce the water you use for daily activities such as laundry and dishwashing, it doesn't ultimately change water conservation, or help cities facing a water crisis unless it is so severe there is not enough water in the cycle to hold over through the treatment cycle. 

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That's why cities need to focus their efforts on xeriscape. Using precious water to turn the brown prairie green is the definition of waste. Denver is without dispute running out of water, as Governor Hickenlooper's office projects a statewide gap of 500,000 acre feet by 2050. That's the equivalent of what 5 million people use in a year. Which also happens to be what the entire state of Colorado uses in a year. In forty years, we won't even be able to support the state's current population, and that's before we take into account population growth.

Leaving the tap running while you brush your teeth is one thing. Trying to turn the desert into a lush, green paradise is another. We need to wake up, and conserve where it really matters.

Arizona, my favorite negative role model

"The good news is that we have enough groundwater, at current levels of annual replenishment, to double our state’s population before we start drawing down groundwater levels. The bad news is that Arizona will double its population, and start drawing down the groundwater table beyond annual replenishment, in just 20 years and Arizona has absolutely no plan to solve this problem."

This is a great article by John Munger about the water crisis down in Arizona.  I think a lot of us like to have faith that policymakers behind closed doors have a plan, but the truth is that politics is about the next few years, not the next few decades.  Very few of the people making decisions in Arizona will be in office twenty years from now, and in the meantime, constituents want cheap, plentiful water, and the businesses that depend on it.  

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According to a recent Gallup poll, Americans still prioritize the economy over the environment, as they almost always have. Economic growth is important, but short-term payoffs shouldn't trump long-term resource responsibility.  To paraphrase Al Gore, there won't be an economy if there is not first an earth upon which it can thrive. Environmental sustainability is imperative for long-term economic growth, or else we will start to feel the consequences of using up our resources too fast.

To put that into terms that might directly apply to Arizona, the state might be fine for the next few decades, but if they don't ramp up water conservation efforts now there is going to be a substantial shock when demand outweighs supply.  What kind of business climate would that be?  What good is cheap land without water rights?  Environmental responsibility is economic responsibility, but the problem is the lapse in benefits.  It is much more politically popular to go with the policy with immediate payoffs, than to follow an approach of caution and austerity.  

But Arizona has got problems whether it would like to address them or not. 

Here are a few thoughts I have.  Start small, because there's still room to get the policy right over the next few years.  But start now. Slowly build a culture of water awareness and conservation, much like San Antonio has done (a city with over twice the rainfall of Phoenix).  

Population growth is high in Arizona, perhaps artificially high - which is not good if the land can't sustain these people in the long run.  Another classic example of short-term gains versus long-term consequences.  As long as there is a gap between the two, we will continue to pursue unwise growth policies.  Something must be done to reduce this gap.  A boom in new housing construction creates jobs and stimulates the economy, but perhaps because so far it has not experienced the true long-term cost of building on arid land.  If proving a 100-year water supply isn't enough to slow new housing developments, perhaps proving a 200-year supply is appropriate.  After all, Arizona will still be around in 200 years; rather, it will if we exercise prudence with our water resources.

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While I believe lawns should be discouraged in Colorado, they should be outright illegal in Arizona.  Make an exception for public parks, and pursue an urban planning policy that emphasizes shared green space, rather than private backyard turf.  Create more neighborhood dog runs, since pets are a common reason for owning a large backyard.  Smaller yards and more park space will allow more efficient irrigation.  While density is a foreign word to the existing Phoenix suburbs, eventually the city's sprawl will reach Prescott.  Before this happens, city planners will have the opportunity to promote higher levels of density, and diminish some of Phoenix's reputation as a suburban strip mall.  

Raise the price of water.  Water rates are simply too low in Arizona, which has created a distortion.  The state's water utilities, such as the Salt River Project, operate at a loss to provide cheap water for farmers and residents using taxpayer money to pay for the electricity needed to deliver the water, often at prices a fraction of the cost.  If Arizona is going to use taxpayer money to influence water policy, it should be to conserve it, not use it more cheaply.  These water subsidies would be better spend in installing drip irrigation for farmers - the state's largest water consumers.  So much irrigation evaporates in the hot desert sun that farmers are forced to pump out huge amounts just to attain necessary moisture levels.  Drip irrigation would reduce evaporation and make agriculture more efficient, having a substantial effect on the state's consumption rates.

Furthermore, Arizona needs to get serious about xeriscaping.  While some residents will get rid of their lawns just after the government seizes their guns, many more would be open to xeriscape if the conversion weren't so expensive.  Of course, raising the price of water would help make xeriscaping a more financially viable option.  But the city should provide incentives and rebates to residents who reduce the need for yard irrigation, to make a difference on the large scale (rather than depend on the actions of a few water-conscious families).  Same with retrofitting.  And metering - much like owning a scale, this lets a household see how behavior patterns affect the overall water usage.  Many incentives for household water conservation exist, but they need to be multiplied by ten. 

Arizona is not a lost cause - there is plenty of time to reverse the collision course of population growth and water security.  The state needs to even out the playing field by ending water subsidies, which have led to unsustainable rates of population growth and existing water consumption. This would be a step toward reducing the gap between short-term gains and long-term consequences.

Doomed to fail

Before I moved to Denver, I had vaguely heard of water crises that seemed limited to towns like Robert Lee, Texas - which might as well have been Yemen to a girl from upstate New York. In the Northeast, everyone has plenty of water, only perfectionists use lawn sprinklers, and any vulnerable species has long since gone extinct.  But driving across Kansas on I-70 was like crossing into an environmental battleground.  And when the backpack salesman at the Denver REI laughed when I asked about a rain cover, I knew I was in for a culture shock.

Much of Denver looks similar to cities on the East Coast: lush, green, perfectly manicured lawns on cookie cutter curbs. It is astonishing how quickly you can forget what part of the country you're in, that cactus and shortgrass prairie flourish just beyond the city limits. Many Denverites are transplants from wetter climates happy to continue their suburban lawnmowing rituals, never pausing to consider that none of the grass on the surrounding prairie is green.

Photo credit: http://ow.ly/mfdkh

 Since I moved here, I have become horrified at what I perceive as a lack of concern about water resources. Denver is flourishing, with a revitalized downtown and thriving job market, and it is no wonder so many families flock to the area to partake in the "active lifestyle." But our irrigated utopia is unsustainable - lawns out here are not native, and require a disproportionate amount of water to survive in the baking sun.  Yet thanks to ample room for housing developments, grass is plentiful. Population growth and our water supply are on a collision course, and sooner than many places (but perhaps less soon than Phoenix), Denver will feel the crunch. We have already seen the effects of climate change, from drought to the diminishing snow pack that fills our reservoirs to the deadly beetle kill that has been the equivalent of throwing gasoline on forest fires. We talk about drought and water restrictions as if they are short-term circumstances, but the rapidly expanding Front Range population is already competing for fewer water resources.

 In this blog, I wish to remind readers of this reality. While a crisis is inevitable, the severity of it is in our hands. Building pipelines and increasing water storage are temporary fixes, often with damaging environmental consequences. The only way forward is to reduce our consumption, and to do that we must move away from our culture of green lawns. The arbitrary importance of a verdant front yard has put Denver on the losing side of water security. If we act now, the changes can be gradual and more easily adopted; if we wait until the crisis hits, the antidote will be much more difficult.