“Together we can save precious water and invest in a more sustainable future.”

By Linn Smith

August 19, 2018—- Under Gov. Jerry Brown, Southern California has recently allotted $43 million a year to bring back it’s popular Cash for Grass program, a program which removes lawns and replaces them with  landscapes that require less water.

In the past Cash for Grass was implemented, but the program ran out of money, although it did manage to save a total of 237.3 billion gallons of water in the year it was in place. The past program was only partially successful, as it didn’t care what homeowners replaced their grass with, as long as it saved water.

The New Cash for Grass Program

The new 2018 Cash for Grass program has strict guidelines. Here’s how it works:

In order to get the Cash for Grass rebate, homeowners must replace their grass with plants that are native, drought-tolerant varieties. Homeowners must cover 50% of the new area with drought-resistant plants and no more than 25% in rocks.

No bare soil can be showing. Bare areas must be covered with mulch to keep the soil moist. The homeowner must install some type of rain barrel to capture rain water from the surrounding area. The rainwater captured can be done by installing an underground tank that holds rainwater or digging trenches around plants to let rain soak into the roots.

From Storm Drain to Ocean

In Southern California’s Cash for Grass program, no artificial turf may be used as it doesn’t give back to the ecosystem that produces food for butterflies and other pollinators or perform the necessary evapotranspiration—in other words, it doesn’t cool the environment! Also, artificial turf doesn’t hold water like healthy soil, but transports rainwater into street gutters which empty into the ocean in L.A.

Allowing rainwater to soak into the soil instead of running into the oceans will help replenish Southern California’s underground aquifers. According to http://www.dpw.lacounty.gov, “Storm drains in Los Angeles take rainwater and runoff from sprinklers straight to the ocean to avoid flooding, carrying contaminants to the ocean such as animal waste, auto fluids, fertilizers and pesticides which create health risk.”

Urban Heat Islands

Allowing water to soak into the soil of a local area also helps cool large urban communities which have become heat islands. Heat islands are urban areas that have significantly warmer temperatures than surrounding rural areas because of city pollution and massive amounts of building materials. (For a history of heat islands see https://planetearth5.com/?s=heat+islands)

Greeley Colorado: Cash for Grass

The city of Greeley, Colorado recently implemented the same Cash for Grass program. They have started out by offering a free landscape lecture series on xeriscaping to residents. The class will cover the best way to transition from grass to a xeriscaped lawn, how to transform your landscape in a cost-effective way and planting areas that will attract the birds, bees and other pollinators.

Gov Jerry Brown says it well….. “Together we can save precious water and invest in a more sustainable future.”

Cash for Grass

Also see Planet Earth Weekly article: https://planetearth5.com/?s=history+of+lawns for further information