Signs of Summer 13: Water, Water, Not Everywhere!

Cache de Poudre River. Photo by Wusel007. Wikimedia Commons

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When you talk about any ecological, environmental or economic aspect of Colorado you inevitably come to one inescapable noun: water. The ability to grow crops depends on the availability of water for irrigation. The ability to raise livestock depends on the availability of water to sustain the growing animals. The ability for humans to live in this dry, sunny, aesthetically appealing place depends on enough water to satisfy our drinking water needs, to operate our waste disposal systems and to generate enough green growth around us to make us feel at home.

Driving into the city of Greeley a few weeks ago at the end of our “West Toward Home” trip, I was struck by the transformation as one went from the surrounding, brown, sage brush, range land into the green, tree lined environs of the city. There was only one answer to however you phrased the “how” or “why” question about this change: “water.”

According to the “Citizen’s Guide to Colorado Water Conservation” agriculture uses some 85% of all the water consumed in Colorado, and towns and cities use about 7%. The remaining 8% of water is used variously in industrial processes, fisheries, recreation and ground water augmentation.

An average single family home in Colorado uses about 140 gallons of water every day of the year. A very small amount of this water serves as drinking water, the rest is used to flush toilets, and wash dishes, clothes and people. Some of this water is also used outside to irrigate plants of all types.

In the summer, the household rate of water use is 50 to 100% higher than in the winter. Much of this increase is due to “outside water use” which, as far as I could discern, simply means lawn and garden irrigation.  This “outside water use” represents a large volume of very expensive and increasingly scarce water. The city of Greeley published a pamphlet in 2015 entitled “Get to Know Your Water.” They estimate that 70% of the water used by each home consumer in the summer is used to water lawns and to a lesser degree gardens.

Photo by heipei. Flickr.

So what exactly is a lawn?

According to the extension office at Colorado State University most lawns in Colorado are a mix of Kentucky bluegrass, tall fescue and perennial rye. The “Kentucky bluegrass” is not actually from Kentucky, by the way. It is an introduced plant native to Europe, Asia, and northern Africa! It is incredibly common in lawns all across the United States and Canada but is classified as invasive and destructive in most natural grasslands. Tall fescue is also an introduced grass species that thrives in marginal environments primarily because of a endo-symbiotic fungus. That fungal symbiont, however, makes the tall fescue toxic to horses or cattle that might graze on it. Perennial rye grass is also an exotic, introduced plant species that is native to Europe, Asia and northern Africa.

So the lawns we see around us are green swaths of exotic and, potentially, invasive and toxic plant species! Add to these disturbing features that fact that a bluegrass lawn, according to the Colorado State Extension service, requires 2.5 inches of water a week in order to survive! Over the five, “Colorado summer” months (May through September) that would mean that a bluegrass lawn will consume 55 inches of water! That represents almost 400% of the average annual rainfall here in northern Colorado!

Why do we have lawns?

There have been some interesting studies on the historical development of lawns and the lawn culture in the United States over the past century. One of my favorites is Virginia Jenkins’ 1994 book, “The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession.” As one reviewer of Jenkins book put it, “in the 18th-century English landscape, a folly was an extravagant building or ruin. In the 20th-century American landscape, the folly had to be the lawn.” Further, “military metaphors used by advertisers and lawn-care experts alike were part of a male viewpoint that saw nature as something to be “controlled and mastered.” It wasn’t long before that controlled lawn, once a sign of affluence, became the strictly enforced norm of good citizenship and general moral rectitude” (Book review by “Reed Business Information, Inc.,” 1994).

What are some of the other costs associated with lawns?

Lawn sprinkler. Public Domain

The grass manager (i.e. the home owner) sets up a regime in which the grass plants are vigorously stimulated to grow (by the addition of water, fertilizer, lime etc.), and in which less desirable plants (the “weeds”) are selected against by the frequent plant tissue destruction ( I.e. “mowing”) (and the more you “feed” and water a lawn the more you have to mow it!), and by the very occasional direct removal of “weeds,” or by the very frequent, broad application of herbicides designed to kill non-grass plants. These steps are the only way to insure that a lawn remains a singular grass ecosystem.

The cost of this control is astounding. Here are some numbers for lawns in the United States (derived primarily from EPA, Audubon Society, and The Garden Club of America publications and web sites):

1. 54 million people mow their lawns each weekend, 800 million gallons of gasoline are used in gas lawn mowers each year,
2. 17 million of these gallons of gasoline are spilled during refueling mishaps,
3. mower exhaust and the volatile organic chemicals from the gas spills contribute to summer, lower atmospheric ozone production (“smog”) and also generate about 5 % of the nation’s total air pollution,
4. 78 million pounds of herbicides/pesticides/fungicides are used on lawns each year (with almost no oversight or control),
5. 3 million tons of fertilizers are applied to lawns each year (again, with almost no oversight or control),
6. 50 to 70% of the total residential water volume is used for landscaping (mostly to water lawns),
7. a total of $30 billion is spent annually on lawns (installation, care, and maintenance).
8. lawns in the United States cover approximately 50,000 square miles. This area represents the largest single, irrigated “crop” grown in the United States.

Walking around my new neighborhood here in Greeley, Colorado I am overwhelmed by the presence of bluegrass lawns. Most house have elaborate sprinkler systems that regularly spray over the lawns (and sidewalks, streets, and sides of the houses). Most mornings, this very dry habitat smells of water and geosmin. Not unpleasant, but very alien and strange (and expensive!!).

Xeriscape Demonstration Graden. Denver. Colorado. Photo by J. Beall, Wikimedia Commons

There are ways to reduce the volume and necessity of “outside water use,” and a very small percentage of my neighbors have taken advantage of these techniques. They have converted either all or sometimes just part of their water hungry lawn into xeriscape systems of natural, short grass prairie plants with rock,  gravel or mulch borders. These transformed yards retain the aesthetic beauty of home landscape without using thousands of gallons of water to support grass plants that are far from their natural climate zones. The Greeley Water Company sponsors a “Life After Lawn” program in which they pay a home owner subsidies for every square foot of bluegrass lawn they convert into a xeriscape. Also a local park has areas planted in native, shortgrass prairie plants (like buffalo grass) to demonstrate the practical and aesthetic possibilities of a home landscape more in tune with the local climate.

Life after Lawn project. Photo by M. Hamilton

I have refused to turn on my sprinklers. The bluegrass lawn out in front of my new house is turning a crispy brown. One neighbor commented that my sprinkler system must be broken. The previous owners of this house, she said, always had such a lush, green lawn! I am getting estimates from sod removal companies to come out and take away the grass covering so that we can put out gravel walkways, buffalo grass patches and prairie flowers in raised beds and planting pots. The photo to the left is the “Life After Lawn” project at my daughter and son-in-law’s house this past spring. My grandson, Ari, is working the wheel barrow and, of course, supervising!

Pictures of my yard next year!!