Las Vegas pushes to ban ornamental grass
LAS VEGAS – A desert city built on a reputation for excess and indulgence wants to become a model for restraint and conservation with a first-in-thenation policy banning grass on which no one walks on.
Las Vegas-area water officials have spent two decades trying to get people to replace thirsty greenery with desert plants, and now they’re asking the Nevada Legislature to outlaw roughly 40% of the turf that’s left.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority estimated there are almost 8 square miles of “nonfunctional turf” in the metro area – grass that no one walks on or otherwise uses in street medians, housing developments and office parks.
They said the ornamental grass requires four times as much water as drought-tolerant landscaping like cactus and other succulents. By ripping it out, they estimated the region can reduce annual water consumption by roughly 15% and save about 14 gallons per person per day.
Las Vegas might be known for splashy displays like the Bellagio fountains on the neon-lit Strip, but officials said residents of bedroom communities and sprawling suburbs embrace conservation measures, including aggressive monitoring of sprinklers and leaky irrigation systems.
“The public perception outside of Las Vegas is certainly much different – and has been for a long time – than the water conservation ethic within the community,” said Colby Pellegrino, Southern Nevada Water Authority water resources director.
California imposed a temporary ban on watering ornamental grass during last decade’s drought, but no state or major city has tried to phase out certain categories of grass permanently.
“The scale of this is pretty unprecedented in terms of a full ban on this nonfunctional turf,” said John Berggren, a water policy analyst at Western Resource Advocates.
The proposal is part of a turf war waged since at least 2003, when the water authority banned developers from planting green front yards in new subdivisions. It also offers owners of older properties the region’s most generous rebate policies to tear out sod – up to $3 per square foot.
Those efforts are slowing. The agency said the number of acres converted under its rebate program fell last year to six times less than what it was in 2008. Meanwhile, water consumption in southern Nevada has increased 9% since 2019.
Last year was among the driest in the region’s history, when Las Vegas went a record 240 days without measurable rainfall. And the future flow of the Colorado River, which accounts for 90% of southern Nevada’s water, is in question.
The waterway supplies Arizona, California, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Wyoming and Mexico. As drought and climate change decrease what the river provides, the amount allocated to Arizona, California and Nevada is projected to be cut further.
Justin Jones, a Clark County commissioner who serves on the water authority’s board, said he doesn’t think ripping out ornamental turf will upend people’s lives.
“To be clear, we are not coming after your average homeowner’s backyard,” he said. But grass in the middle of a parkway, where no one walks: “That’s dumb.”
“The only people that ever set foot on grass that’s in the middle of a roadway system are people cutting the grass,” Jones said.