
California Lawn Watering Economics - ryan_j_naughton
http://priceonomics.com/california-lawn-watering-economics/
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wanderfowl
Interesting. I'm a big proponent of Xeriscaping instead of lawns, but
Xeriscape can look great, or absolutely awful, depending on how well it's
done, and I think that's part of the reluctance.

The problem is that lawns are easy to do: put down sod, water, mow, fertilize,
and it'll look fine. Any idiot can make a surface look OK with grass.

Xeriscape doesn't need mowing nor water, but it needs to be designed by a
competent landscape architect to look good, and needs decent layout and rocks
and whatnot. If you just tear up your lawn and mulch the remainder, throwing
in the odd plant, it's going to look like hell.

I think part of this battle, then, is showing people that xeriscape can look
_really_ good, and although it's a different kind of pretty than a lawn, it's
still pretty. HOAs will take a while to come around to it, still, but it's
nice to see the conversation starting.

~~~
mturmon
I very much agree about the turnkey nature of a turf grass lawn. Everyone
knows how to do it, and everyone knows how to take care of it.

But for example, the outfit called "Turf Terminators" (they convert your front
yard for free, and pocket the ~$4/sq.ft. rebate) has been churning out
travesties like this all over LA:

[http://s3-media2.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/WsdchuaR6H96tnC2LEZ9R...](http://s3-media2.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/WsdchuaR6H96tnC2LEZ9Rg/o.jpg)

Not enough people know that it's possible to do much, much better with a zero-
or low-irrigation landscape.

~~~
sbov
Yeah, from my friend's experience, if you want a terribly Xeriscaped lawn you
can get it from just the rebate. And the ones who provide a good Xeriscaped
lawn bumped their price up by the same amount of the California rebate.

So you can get a terrible one for free, or a good one for the same overall
price as you had to pay before the rebate was introduced.

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hyperion2010
100% reduction in lawns saves 7%. 10% reduction in agricultural use would save
7.7%. Given how incredibly inefficient most California irrigation systems are,
the long term cost of the systems needed to implement at 10% reduction would
probably pay for themselves rather quickly. Too bad agricultural water is
subsidized.

~~~
Shivetya
the bulk of the agricultural use of water is for dairy cows, either directly
watering the fields, providing feed, and even in processing cows for meat.
[http://www.businessinsider.com/real-villain-in-the-
californi...](http://www.businessinsider.com/real-villain-in-the-california-
drought-isnt-almonds--its-red-meat-2015-4)

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joshuaheard
"Fleur de lawn" is a lawn alternative I am looking at for the Pacific
Northwest. It is a hardy mix of lawn, herbs and flowers. It is drought
tolerant and most importantly to me, never needs mowing. It was designed by
university researchers.The plants are small, but the roots go down 2 feet.
Each plant helps feed the other plants, so they are synergistic. Maybe they
have something similar for the Southwest area.

[http://protimelawnseed.com/products/fleur-de-
lawn](http://protimelawnseed.com/products/fleur-de-lawn)

~~~
dsp1234
_never needs mowing_

From the link, "Mow about once a month to maintain this lawn at a height
between 3 and 5 inches.".

On the flip side, I replaced all of the grass with a patterned stone garden,
in the places where there is no lounging, and small pea pebbles and rubber
mulch in the places where people are likely to play. So I'm 100% mowing free,
and it still looks nice since the stones/pebbles have interesting patterns.

edit: Change lawn to grass for clarity. Trees, shrubs, etc all stayed or were
replanted.

~~~
WalterBright
Stone gardens will make your house hotter in the summer.

~~~
gknoy
How does a lawn cool my house?

~~~
rconti
I'm guessing it doesn't reflect as much heat.

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nostromo
My theory: humans prefer grass and open-canopy tree coverage on a biological
basis. It's our natural habitat, and perhaps even has roots in the African
Savana.

Every other animal has an instinctual attraction to an appropriate habitat, so
why wouldn't humans? The problem with us is that we "nest" in a desert and
then try and make it look like a bucolic grassland.

~~~
Avshalom
alternate theory: gravel and cactus are pointy.

~~~
nostromo
There are non-pointy options that also don't "feel right." You could replace
your lawn with beach sand, for example.

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caminante
Wow! That's low...

    
    
      "we found that if everyone in California got rid of their lawn, it would
      save 5-7% of total water usage in the state."

~~~
Reedx
Yeah, agriculture (especially livestock) is the real thing that needs to be
tackled. Everything else is small potatoes in comparison.

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devereaux
"we found that if everyone in California got rid of their lawn, it would save
5-7% of total water usage in the state."

But what part could be saved if agricultural water subsidies were removed? And
unlike washing cars, I'm not saying making it illegal - just not encouraging
the waste with artificially low prices, below the market prices.

We will never know for sure, as all we can have is studies, and estimations.
And it would be deemed unfair for those who have invested in agriculture.

Who could have known irrigating the desert would be a wasteful endeavor and
likely to cause water shortages in the future?

EDIT: my main idea was to not make anything illegal, or taking any rights, but
let whoever bear the full true costs and let the market sort it out.
Industrial and agricultural uses of water are fine in my book - if you pay the
price.

~~~
sbov
This over simplifies the problem. Water rights are treated a lot like property
rights. How is taking water from these people any different than taking
someone's land because they obtained it 100 years ago when the region had
fewer people?

~~~
vacri
Because water is mobile and needed by humans to survive. If the state runs out
of water, people will die.

Also, when land is needed for the public's need, there is Eminent Domain,
which gets invoked from time to time.

~~~
devereaux
No, people will not die. They will buy bottled water.

Is it expensive? Well, maybe living in the middle of a desert should not be
subsidized. Anyone who thinks that's too expensive is free to another place.
Notice the "free to".

Eminent Domain is awful. As I just posted in another thread, I think the best
way in general is leaving everyone free - not forcing anyone to do what they
don't want to do, as I don't like the concept of force or violence.

I don't care about government action as such - if it was optional, as in a
"recommendation". As in saying cigarettes are bad. Not in banning or taxing
them.

Eminent Domain is using the force of the government and the threat of violence
against whoever stands in the way. Like people whose homes are in the way of
making new private buildings, as seen in many cases. All it takes is giving
them enough money to make them leave on their own free will.

If they don't want to, or if you're too cheap for that, what makes anyone
think you have more "rights" to their property than these people do??

I can't ever agree to that, sorry.

~~~
gknoy
If they can't afford to buy expensive water (which we need for sewers,
showers, washing dishes, etc -- not merely drinking), chances are that they'd
have a hard time finding the money to move elsewhere, even if it would be
cheaper in the long-term to do so.

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HillaryBriss
One of the biggest costs of maintaining a lawn in Southern California is the
cost of paying the weekly "mow, blow, and go" gardening service. This cost is
actually more than that of the water.

This gardener service cost savings should really be accounted for in estimates
of the time to recoup costs when a plastic lawn replaces a real one.

~~~
hermanradtke
There is just as much maintenance on xeriscape. The focus of the article is
around cost centers that consume water, not the cost of a lawn.

I thought the the article did a good job as presenting two sides. Lawns
relative to agriculture do not use up a lot of water. However, lawns do use a
lot of water relative to other household usages.

~~~
shostack
What sort of maintenance would that be exactly? The whole point of xeriscaping
is low maintenance.

~~~
cam-
We have a xeriscaped yard. Basically the only cost is hitting it with some
water when it is 110F+ and cleaning up some brush.

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logfromblammo
If I saw that bar graph in my profiler, I know which section of the code I
would be optimizing first: Agriculture.

But aside from that, I look down and see another bar graph for water use by
type of lawn, and see that I could probably save 2% of the state's water just
by voiding all landscaping covenants for all the HOAs around the state.

~~~
Reedx
Exactly. An outlier like that in any other context would be the #1 priority by
a long shot.

But between their lobbyists and how much we all love artificially cheap
burgers, it's a hell of an uphill battle...

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roflchoppa
Alright I'm going to do it. ill tear out my lawn and replace it with
California Native species. You actually don't tear out the old lawn, you just
put cardboard over it, then mulch on top, from what I've read. Ill try to do
some kind of write up for a cost analysis.

~~~
rsync
"Thank you so much - really - thank you from the bottom of our hearts."

\-- industrial Ag and their investors

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rm_-rf_slash
A yard should be a reflection of a home's environment. If you live in a
desert, the surroundings of your house should match that. You can be very
decorative without having to use a substantial amount of water.

Then again, I'm from Upstate NY, where nobody waters their lawn because the
region is soaked. But that doesn't mean grass is sacrosanct. We removed the
entire back yard of grass between our house and the lake because it made more
sense to have a stone patio. We also replaced our front yards with gravel
driveways because we rent the house out fairly often and have far more
bedrooms than parking spaces.

I think in general people should look to more than a flat pane of grass as the
answer to the space around their home.

~~~
bengoodger
To some extent. But we have a diversity of architecture in California, we're
not all adobe mission huts and mid century modern homes. Old Palo Alto for
example has a preponderance of 1920s/30s Tudor Revival homes, which really
deserve an English garden.

IMO the issue here is really the ridiculously low cost of water. If someone
wants to have an extravagantly lush lawn let them. But it's only fair that
they pay through the nose for it. This makes it clear to consumers what their
choice costs. Hitting people in the wallet is a far more effective way at
changing behavior than lecturing people about civic mindedness which happens
too often in California.

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devhead
we also get to see our water rates increase significantly due to this required
conservation.

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phrogdriver
If only humankind had a discipline dedicated to the efficient allocation of
scarce resources... Car washing? Absolument pas! Growing rice paddies in a
desert? Sure, go ahead.

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MBlume
> Lawn reformists are generally proponents of converting yards over to less
> resource intensive alternatives like drought tolerant plants or native
> plants species.

Or we could just build the houses closer together in the first place.

~~~
donatj
Because less nature is a good thing? Far apart, self sufficient and largely
unmaintained would be best IMHO.

