- The grass isn't always greener when it comes to water conservation
- Phoenix using less water with 360,000 more people than it had two decades ago
- Follow The Arizona Republic's ongoing water coverage at watercrisis.azcentral.com
I don't understand why so many people in metro Phoenix remain addicted to grass.
After 50 years of mowing lawns back East, I'm ecstatic about inhabiting a yard covered with rocks.
Not only has my water bill been reduced significantly, but I feel like I'm doing my little part to conserve our precious H20.
Every drop counts.
If you've been following Brandon Loomis' captivating but sobering series, As the River Runs Dry, you know that a water crisis awaits us. Not if. When.
Already, cities like Las Vegas and Los Angeles are taking serious, and successful, measures to curtail water use. Vegas has lawn-watering bans nine months a year and has paid residents more than $200 million to get rid of their lawns.
Since I still see a lot of green in Phoenix, I was curious what we're doing to change our colors.
So far, the city has been more Billy Graham than Big Brother.
"We think culture change is more effective than government mandate," Kathryn Sorensen, the city of Phoenix's water services director, told me. "We want to teach our residents … and their children … to embrace a desert lifestyle. … The desert is beautiful, don't you think?"
Absolutely, if it means I don't have to push a John Deere any more.
The soft-sell seems to have been effective. "We have almost 360,000 more people living here," Sorensen said, "and we are using less water than we were in 1996."
Per person, she said, daily residential use has dropped from more than 150 gallons two decades ago to 104 today. When you factor in industry and agriculture, the per person total rises to about 160 gallons. Still not as good as LA (129 gallons daily), but we're using less.
"Arizonans know the value of water," Sorensen said.
There are steps we can all take to prove that, such as:
— Plant more native vegetation. (Those imported fruit trees are giant sponges.)
— Use more efficient appliances. (Replace that old, water-guzzling toilet.)
— Eat less meat. (Growing feed for livestock is one of the region's biggest liquid drains.)
(Many years ago, I made national headlines during a drought in Ohio when I gave away T-shirts to people who turned in their neighbors for wasting water. But let's not go there ... yet.)
Phoenix has several helpful websites with tips — Teach Your Lawn to Drink Responsibly — on conservation. Among them: wateruseitwisely.com andsmarthomewaterguide.org.
And if you live in an area served by city of Phoenix water, you can find out how much neighbors in your ZIP code are using per day, by going to reporter Caitlin McGlade's interactive graphic on our water page — which contains all of our recent water coverage.
You're going to hear a lot more from us on this issue, too. Loomis' series will continue through 2015. On April 1, The Arizona Republic, in conjunction with the Arizona Community Foundation and the Morrison Institute for Public Policy, will award a$100,000 prize for the best digital strategy to raise Arizonans' awareness of water issues.
I've got conservation fever, too.
If necessary, I can become as annoying as that old guy back in the Midwest who yells at kids, "Get off my lawn."
Except I don't have one anymore.
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