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Lawn Be Gone 

As the first Colorado Water Plan was being debated at various basin roundtables, Colorado Roundtable stalwart Chuck Ogilby stood up at a regional meeting and challenged the three other Western Slope roundtables to adopt a high target for municipal water conservation, as the Colorado Roundtable had done. “If we all adopted the high conservation target, we could save 450,000 acre-feet and we wouldn’t need any additional transmountain diversions to Denver,” Ogilby said. He had just identified a big unspoken issue in the room: municipal water use. As we’ve explored, Colorado’s population growth is causing the “gap”—the more people use water, the more people need water. Indeed, it drives the entire water planning process at the roundtables and the state.[1] Ogilby was stating the obvious, but most roundtable participants don’t share his level of concern.

Many Western Slope irrigators fear that if people use less, that cuts demand for their irrigation water and drops its value. And farmers along the South Platte River objected repeatedly when low-flow toilet bills were introduced at the legislature because the bill cut back municipal sewage treatment plant return flows they were relying on further down the South Platte. Water planners say blue grass and trees reduce the “heat island” effect that asphalt and cement create, and that trees and grass keep urban temperatures lower. That’s correct, which makes this discussion challenging.

Water buffaloes still think there is “free water” in Colorado if it can just be captured. By “lopping off the top of the hydrograph”—capturing high runoff flows that exceed what farmers can put to beneficial use during spring runoff—they can get water for free. With a little luck, they can even get the federal government, the CWCB, or future residents to pay for it. Engineers like to build, and there are few projects more exciting or grandiose than dams or big water diversions. Sod growers want to sell more sod this year than last year. For builders, nothing announces the completion of a new house quite like freshly rolled sod.

In the face of this opposition, the 2015 Colorado Water Plan took the path of least resistance, settling for low-to-medium municipal conservation targets. At a meeting in Glenwood Springs in the summer of 2014, CWCB members heard that people want bluegrass lawns and developers cannot sell homes without them. Joe Stibrich, then with Aurora Water, claimed that city folks have a right to expect a “reasonable residential experience” including irrigated lawns, public parks, sports fields, and golf courses.[2]  Rachel Richards, then a Pitkin County commissioner with a keen interest in water issues, had a different take. “The Front Range says people come to Colorado because of its outstanding environment, yet we dry up our headwater streams on the Western Slope so we can plant bluegrass and exotic shrubs,” Richards said. “We compromise the very amenities that draw people here.”

The Gunnison and Southwest basin roundtables eventually came around to Ogilby’s position, joining the Colorado River roundtable in adopting a high municipal conservation goal by the time the final 2015 state water plan was released.[3] But the Yampa-White-Green Basin Roundtable in the northwest corner of the state waffled. Jon Hill, its roundtable chair, said, “For a lot of us, high conservation means land regulation. Low conservation means you don’t care. Medium is undefined. So, we’re still up in the air and undecided about how far we want to go to support this.”[4]

Municipal water conservation refers to reducing how much water people use indoors and out. About 95 percent of water used indoors flows down the drain, into wastewater treatment plants, and back to the river. Only a fraction is consumed and lost to the system. Just the opposite is the case with water used outdoors, since up to 95 percent of water used outdoors is consumed by lawns and shrubs, or hay in the case of most Colorado farms. Around 8 percent of municipal water is lost in leaky pipes, but nearly all leaked water ends up in the water table and eventually, in theory, returns to rivers. The best reason to fix leaky pipes is to save the energy it takes to treat and pump the lost water.  Detecting and solving every leak will not affect the water balance much, although it could keep municipalities from diverting so much from rivers. Water providers distinguish between passive and active conservation, where passive takes place automatically without any action on our part—think low-flow toilets and shower heads. Active conservation requires human action, such as by limiting how long we stand under the showerhead, or by sticking a finger into the soil to determine how dry it is and watering only when needed. City ordinances limiting how much bluegrass lawn can be planted is another form of passive conservation, since 4,000 square feet of lawn needs twice as much water as 2,000 square feet without any action on the part of people. The Colorado legislature finally waded into this area in 2024 when they passed a statute prohibiting local governments from allowing turf on nonfunctional property like highway median strips, parking lots, or transportation corridors. The bill does not address turf planted before 2025, and also allows cities to permit plantings of native or water-wise plants that have been hybridized for arid climates.[5] The statute preamble recognizes the role that plants play in reducing the heat island effect and says climate change is happening, a touchy subject that for a long time was too hot to handle at many roundtable meetings.

I was recently in the San Fernando Valley for my 50th high school reunion, and our jet had to fly from the Burbank airport to LAX to pick up more fuel, so I got an up close and personal look at one of the largest heat islands on earth, the LA basin.  The two airports are less than 17 miles apart, but over 10 million people resided in the area visible from the plane on our short flight. Every now and then there was a ballfield, but the rivers were concrete thruways and there was no open space or greenways in sight. Grey was the dominant color. I cannot shake a nagging fear that the Colorado Front Range will become the next LA basin.

As best as I can tell, we could save 300,000 more acre-feet by aggressively limiting outdoor water use. The 2015 Water Plan did not include the table below, but it illustrates what Ogilby was talking about  at the roundtable meeting. If we use less, we need to divert less from rivers.[6]

Table 13.1 Potential Conservation Savings

Potential water savings in acre-feet

Low Conservation Target

Medium

High

Passive water savings – using low flow toilets, clothes washers, faucets and showerheads

154,200

154,200

154,200

Active water savings resulting from people changing their water use behavior

160,000

331,000

461,100

Total water savings by 2050 – acre-feet

314,200

485,200

615,300

Outside of agriculture, I estimate that 86 percent of the water that people consume in Colorado is from outdoor landscaping.[7] If we are serious about trying to conserve water outside of ag, that’s where we need to focus. Almost all the water that people consume, or use, or apply, (again, outside of ag) is evaporated by grass and shrubs. But don’t blame it on the lawn. “It’s not the grass that wastes water, it’s people,” Anthony Koski, a CSU horticulture professor, once told me.  While each square foot of bluegrass needs 18 gallons of water over a Denver summer, lawns can get by with only 13 gallons if watering is done on an as-needed basis, and not the day after a heavy rainstorm. Thirteen gallons per foot still amounts to 1.7 acre-feet per acre, about what a typical acre of hay needs in Colorado. That is why the ranch acreage we’ve dried up in Grand, Summit, and Park counties is about equal to the acres of bluegrass lawns we’ve planted along the Front Range, although in general when an agricultural field is converted to a subdivision, the subdivision will use less water than the irrigated field did. Many residents over-water, using up to 36 gallons per square foot because they water every day instead of once or twice a week, or because the sprinklers leak or are not calibrated properly. That is almost three times the amount needed! Koski, the CSU professor, suggested turning off the automatic timer and watering only when necessary, and that we check the soil to determine how moist it is. The Southern Nevada Water Authority, which supplies water to Las Vegas, says “On average, residents use 40 percent more water on their grass than most turf requires.”[8]

The best way to get people to use less water is to charge more. Boulder uses smart utility bills that tell customers how much their water use compares to their neighbor, or how much current year consumption compares to last year. That helps reduce over-watering, but charging more for increasing use, known as block rates, is far more effective. Boulder charges a low base rate to all consumers throughout the year based on the amount they use in the winter, since people do not water lawns then.[9] But Boulder charges increasing rates for increasing use from May through October. In Irvine, California, industrial water use dropped 50 percent within eight years after the city starting charging block rates and initiated other water saving measures. [10] In Las Vegas, water consumption was cut in half as water rates quadrupled.

Figure 13.1 Relationship in Las Vegas between domestic water cost and use

The 2015 Colorado Water Plan did not sign on to block rates. Under its “no and low regrets” target, as few as 10 percent of water providers will be using block rates 35 years from now. Neither the 2023 Colorado Water Plan nor the 2022 South Platte Basin Implementation Plan mention block rates. When I searched for “rates,” what came back was a prediction that use rates were going to grow, as in, “per capita use rates, are projected to grow [in the South Platte Basin] from approximately 654,000 AFY in 2015 to between 899,000 AFY and 1,187,000 AFY in 2050.”[11]

Table 13.2 Municipal Water Conservation Targets

Municipal conservation target:

Low Conservation

Medium

High

Utilities implement block rates and charge more for increasing water use

< 10 percent

< 50 percent

50 – 100 percent

One reason that water utilities object to stringent water conservation is they fear they cannot raise enough revenue when use declines. Since they charge by the gallon, decreasing use results in decreasing revenue. Once planted, bluegrass and water-hogging trees and shrubs keep guzzling water for decades. Tearing them out later is not easy, especially after trees have extended their roots to reach the areas watered by lawn sprinklers. Trees die if the sod is ripped out and the sprinklers are shut off. Lawns that are shaded do not need nearly as much water, but the trees providing the shade end up using about the same water that lawns do. That is why it is so important to limit the amount of bluegrass and water-hogging trees in newly built homes. Louis Meyer, of SGM, disputed the notion that developers feel they can only sell homes with wall-to-wall bluegrass. “Developers will build whatever the building codes require,” he said. “What they want is certainty. If the code requires water-saving fixtures and water-smart landscaping, that’s what they will build.” Requiring new subdivisions to xeriscape does not force new home buyers to buy them—they can still buy homes with bluegrass in older subdivisions. We have been living with building codes for most of the last century. Lot-setback requirements mandate how much space is needed between neighboring homes and streets, and subdivision rules require home building materials to maintain the neighborhood’s “look and feel.” Yet, water consumption building standards are rare in Colorado.

Las Vegas has strict turf requirements because that is the only way it can continue to be the fastest-growing state.[12] Nevada’s only remaining water source is the water it already uses (that is, unless it ignores or repeals its pesky prohibition against groundwater mining).[13] Las Vegas has been regulating landscape water consumption since 1997. (I’ve crafted a model water conservation ordinance that we could use in Colorado based in part on Las Vegas’s water conservation ordinance). If Colorado mandated that every stream meet the minimum stream health standards that biologists recommend, we too would adopt rules limiting outdoor water consumption. We take water from 75 headwater streams on the west side of the Continental Divide from Cameron Pass to Independence Pass in the northern half of the state, and a lot of that water, about 500,000 acre-feet a year, is consumed by lawns on the Front Range. We have traded headwater river health for suburbia.

When participants recommend that land use decisions should be made with water supply in mind at Colorado Roundtable meetings (which we do regularly), water utilities say they are not in the land planning business. Their responsibility is to deliver water when it is needed and to make sure they have enough. Pat Wells of Colorado Springs Utilities said at a 2012 joint roundtable meeting, “Utilities cannot meet high conservation targets because city ordinances do not mandate conservation.”[14] The Colorado legislature passed a water conservation statute in 1989, nearly thirty years ago, but it only applies to public buildings.[15] The law requires all governments to prepare a water budget for their public buildings.  Bluegrass turf can only be used in high traffic areas and not in median strips. Cities must plant new or renovated landscapes with plants requiring less water.  They must use mulches to reduce water consumption and install efficient irrigation systems that only turn on when soil moisture sensors detect water is needed. Buildings must use 1.6 gal flush toilets. Water audits also have been required for all public properties since 1992.

But this only applies to government buildings built since 1989[BG1] [KR2] .

The CWCB contributed $150,000 to produce a guidebook of best practices for water conservation. However, the CWCB does not officially support the best practices—that would be too controversial—and they are not required in Colorado.[16] The best practices were produced by Colorado WaterWise, a public tax exempt charity created in 1989 whose board includes city planners and representatives of environmental organizations. They donate their time and hold brown-bag lunches to encourage municipal conservation. (The term “waterwise” is also used generically to describe plants that, once established, need less water than most traditional plants. Waterwise plants will not necessarily withstand periods of drought, so they still need water on a regular basis.) The best practices below are voluntary, which means they must be adopted over the opposition of all the forces lined up against water conservation described above. It’s going to be up to us, citizens, to get our city councils and utilities to adopt these best practices. This is easier than it sounds—it generally won’t take many citizens asking elected officials about water conservation before it begins happening.

Water conservation is low hanging fruit, and here’s how it can be done.

1. Install water meters in houses, adopt block rate structures so that residents pay increasingly higher rates for increasing water use, and charge tap fees to developers.

2. Monitor total water demand and supplies, establish demand targets, and develop programs to meet those targets.

3. Develop a leak detection system and procedures to repair leaks.

4. Hire a conservation coordinator to oversee conservation programs.

5. Pass local ordinances that explicitly prohibit water waste.

6. Educate the public about water conservation with water bill inserts, tell customers how much water they’re consuming, and alert them about potential leaks.

7. Prepare landscape water budgets for customers and tell them when they are over-budget; incorporate water budgets into the utility block rate structure.

8. Prepare landscape design regulations, and train and certify landscape professionals in efficient water use—in Colorado, urban landscape irrigation accounts for at least 40 percent of the total annual water demand for a utility.

9. Recommend water efficient landscapes to citizens; this can reduce annual irrigation by 35 percent.

10. Recommend regular landscape irrigation maintenance checkups.

11. Recommend efficient water fixtures and appliances in new construction.

12. Recommend high efficiency fixture and appliances to replace water guzzlers in homes and businesses that already exist.

13. Provide residential water surveys and evaluations for high demand customers.

14. Provide specialized surveys, audits, and equipment efficiency improvements for commercial users.

Notice how often the best practices “recommend” behaviors that use less water. We don’t “recommend” that people pay taxes or follow speed limits. Cities vary widely in how they apply these practices—they do not have to implement any of them, and most don’t in Colorado.

Best practice number seven recommends water budgets. Highlands Ranch, which receives water from the Centennial Water and Sanitation District, develops its water budget this way: it assumes that 45 percent of a lot is landscaped, and it allots 27 inches of water, which equates to 17 gallons for each square foot of landscaping each summer. A typical 10,000 square foot lot is therefore permitted to use 76,000 gallons a year to water the landscape. Customers are charged more only if they use more than this amount. Boulder measures irrigable areas by GIS computer analysis and allows 15 gallons per square foot for the first 5,000 square feet, and 12 gallons for the next 9,000 square feet. Highland Ranch’s water budget is about 10% greater than Boulder’s—Highland Ranch’s 31,510 homes are budgeted to use 7,092 acre feet, 842 more acre-feet to irrigate lawns than they would if they were located in Boulder.[17] That may not sound like much, but remember that Highlands Ranch gets a lot of its water from the non-renewable Denver Aquifer. Starting in 2010, every water utility delivering at least 2,000 acre-feet must develop a water conservation plan.[18] Water providers have to report how many customers have meters, how the bill for water use that isn’t metered, whether they use block rates, and how they regulate water use in new home construction. The statute bars homeowner associations and special districts from adopting homeowner covenants that prohibit xeriscaping, although it does not go so far as to mandate them.[19]

 The law does not require utilities to mandate gallon-per-day use targets. About 100 providers in Colorado deliver 2,000 acre-feet or more, and about half had voluntarily complied with the reporting law between 2013 and 2016.[20] Getting the reporting bill passed was not easy. Utilities complained the state should not be poking its nose into their business, claiming it interferes with that sacred cow, local control. But their real objection may be hidden—if Front Range cities conserve more, it weakens their case to divert more from the Western Slope. If cities and water utilities reported how much water they used, it would be easy to spot profligate users. Search online for “daily water use by Colorado cities” to see how hard it is to find comparison data.[21] The few cities that do report daily citizen water use don’t follow uniform standards. Grand Junction measures water that goes through water treatment plants but not water coursing through open irrigation ditches that citizens use to water their lawns. And so Grand Junction water providers claim they have some of the lowest water use in the state, but that’s not really the case. There is no table comparing use by different cities in the 2015 or 2023 Colorado Water Plans and the CWCB doesn’t report this data either. But the reporting bill should provide the data we need to compare how many gallons are used each day in different communities, if we deigned to make this public.

The 2015 Colorado Water Plan established a target of achieving 400,000 acre-feet of municipal and industrial water conservation by 2050.[22] The 2023 Colorado Water Plan dropped this goal, but it did report that “400,000 acre-feet of storage has either been constructed or will soon be completed.”[23] The 2015 plan focused on demand, while the 2023 update focused on storage.

I think there is ample room for improvement both indoors and out, primarily from existing buildings. The following table involves both passive conservation (switching from toilets that use 3.5 gallons per flush to dual flush toilets using .8 or 1.6 gallons for example) and active conservation (like taking shorter showers).[24] Americans use twice as much water as we think we do. Over a quarter of the water used in average households, 28 percent, is from flushing toilets![25] If you are skeptical we can pull this off, remember that almost everyone else in the world uses far less water than the blue bars in the graph below—imagine how quickly people would cut back if utilities charged steeply for use exceeding the blue bars. Electricity to pump water is often a city’s or water utility’s biggest expense, so the energy savings alone justify reducing indoor water use.

Figure 13.2 Potential water savings from indoor residential use

It would be easy to draw a similar table for outdoor use, where the lower bars would correspond to reduced bluegrass square footage, or from using drought tolerant plants. The relationship is perfectly linear—1,000 square feet of bluegrass consumes exactly 20 percent of the water a 5,000 square foot lawn consumes. Again, the best way to reduce outdoor consumption would be to charge more for increasing use. As a general rule, any utility or city that delivers water to at least 7,000 residents has to file a conservation plan with the state of Colorado. Smaller providers do not have to develop conservation plans, but the CWCB will help pay if they choose to write one. Several water providers in the Roaring Fork Valley took advantage of this but, again, the plan lacks any gallon-per-day targets and it fails to mandate any water conservation practices. California passed a model landscape ordinance in 2006 that requires all new or modified landscapes larger than 2,500 square feet (about a sixteenth of an acre) to adopt a water budget that uses only 60 percent of the water that would be needed if the landscape were 100 percent bluegrass.[26] That means landscapes have to be xeriscaped. If cities don’t adopt a water conservation ordinance within five years, the state ordinance applies by default. The law basically requires the fourteen best practices described above.[27]

Grand Junction has been touted at Colorado Roundtable presentations for its municipal conservation program, notably because four water providers, the cities of Grand Junction and Palisade, the Ute Water Conservancy District, and the Clifton Water District have all agreed to share water in times of shortage. As Clifton Water engineer Dave Reinertson said at a roundtable meeting in 2012, “If one of us has a shortage, we all have a shortage.” Clifton Water use dropped 20 percent between 2002 and 2012, reflecting permanent conservation savings that resulted when citizens adapted to the 2002 drought.[28]But water-sharing agreements like this in Colorado are all but unheard of. I once recommended at a roundtable summit that if Front Range cities could conserve more, they could dedicate the water conservation savings to new communities and reduce the need for another diversion from the Western Slope. John Hendrick, General Manager of Centennial Water that provides water to Highlands Ranch, looked at me and drily said, “Why would I do that?” Cities are not likely to share water in Colorado, especially as Colorado water law is so contentious that formal water-sharing agreements are rarely worth the trouble. Cities face the same dilemma that irrigators—if their residents conserve so they need less water, the city will likely perceive it is at risk of losing its water rights under Colorado’s over-hyped “use it or lose it” law.

My hometown Carbondale diverts over 6,000 acre-feet a year from the Crystal River into the Carbondale Ditch to irrigate all of thirteen acres,  an irrigation efficiency rating of 0.4%, meaning that 99.6% of the water diverted from the Crystal River does not irrigate a field, according to a March 2024 article by Heather Sackett of Aspen Journalism[29]. It is hard to understand why Carbondale continues this wasteful practice, but I suppose it is because the city thinks it must in order to ward off a potential, or theoretical, “use it or lose it” challenge. If so, the city’s is hurting the Crystal River out of, in my view, a misguided fear. Plus, if the city is not putting the water to a specific beneficial use, it should lose the right to divert it.

The grass with the most desired characteristics by people in Colorado is … bluegrass! It refers to several species of grasses from the genus Poa, with the most famous being Kentucky bluegrass.[30] Also known as meadow grass, it is native on every continent in the northern hemisphere and grows to 30-70 cm tall (12-28”). It is so ubiquitous that it was one of the species that Carl Linnaeus included in his landmark work Species Plantarum in 1753, the starting point for the plant-naming taxonomy we use today. It survives harsh winters where temperatures can drop well below zero, recovers well after winter dormancy, accepts foot traffic, and effectively resists disease. Almost all lawns and parks are comprised of this grass species. It is also used to grow hay for cattle. But it requires frequent and relatively heavy watering from May to September. For that reason, we should use it sparingly, limited to places with a lot of human foot traffic and not in median strips or other spaces that we just look at. In Las Vegas, golf courses can only have five acres of bluegrass per hole. That should incentivize golfers to get more accurate with their shots!

It seems like a no brainer that we can drastically lower water use by focusing on new people moving here. It is far easier to plan new growth to be water efficient than to retrofit existing homes. That’s what the Sterling Ranch development in Douglas County is trying to do. At buildout, it will have 12,500 homes and over 30,000 residents, about a third the size of Highlands Ranch. Located south of Denver between Chatfield Reservoir and Roxborough State Park, Sterling Ranch residents will use only 106 gallons per person per day, 40 percent less than the current statewide average of 172 gallons per person per day. Much of this is used indoors and will be recycled. Sterling Ranch will use 60 percent of the water the average Colorado citizen uses, but consume only a third as much since it is designing its landscaping to use little water.

The developer boasted that each residence will use 0.3 acre-feet per year (97,500 gallons) compared to the .75 acre-foot supply (244,000 gallons) that Douglas County normally requires developers to provide for each new house that it approves. In fact, average consumption is only .17 acre feet, about 55,000 gallons per resident per year, in large part because bluegrass turf is not permitted. At least half of the outdoor irrigation demand can be met by capturing rainwater from storm drains and rooftops and storing it in underground tanks or retention ponds. The rainwater will be used to water lawns, gardens and open space. Individual yards and community landscaping will only use grass as accent strips. Most spaces that are planted will use drought-tolerant trees and shrubs, and ball fields will use artificial turf. Yards will be a couple inches below the sidewalk to capture rainwater and snowmelt instead of letting it drain into the street. Remaining street runoff will flow into 55,000-gallon cisterns built under the streets to be rationed. "You abuse exterior water use, we'll warn you, fine you, and then we will shut your water off," says Jack Hoagland, a partner in Sterling Ranch.[31] Engineer Beorn Courtney, a water resources engineer and president of Element Water Consulting in Lakewood, advises Sterling Ranch. She says Douglas County was reluctant to approve all phases of the Sterling Ranch project upfront, fearing it could not meet its ambitious water conservation goals. Sterling Ranch said it could get by with .3 acre foot per residence, but Douglas county still required .4 acre foot per residence when it approved Sterling Ranch.[32]

Water is becoming so expensive and scarce that it is limiting daily per capita use. Sterling Ranch developer David Smethils says he pays a water tap fee of $69,000 per residence, but it would cost $150,000 per residence if he was required to purchase a tap fee to provide .75 acre-foot per residence. It wasn’t that long ago, June 1996, that the average home value in Denver was $150,000. A generation later, that’s the cost of the tap fee![33] Affordable housing developer David Zucker of Zocato Community Development says city building departments are demanding a larger tap fee than developers often need for the project. “Utilities need to snap into the 21st Century,” Zucker said in an article in The Denver Post written by Judith Kohler on May 30, 2023.

Cities and water utilities are adapting to reduced water supplies and hotter temperatures. The 2023 Colorado Water Plan may have dropped the goal of conserving 400,000 acre-feet by 2050 because it is happening anyway. Denver Water, which serves around 1.5 million in the metro area, offers developers and customers a variety of rebates on their fees when they install the highest efficiency fixtures, landscape designs and irrigation technology. Aurora Water started its Prairie Waters indirect reuse program in 2010. About 93 percent of the city’s water rights are reusable, says Greg Baker, spokesman for Aurora Water.[34] Aurora is discouraging bluegrass because the water it consumes cannot be reused. Aurora’s typical per capita water use down to 115 gallons a day, compared to 188 gallons in 2000 when about 120,000 fewer people lived there.[35] Castle Rock’s per capita water use ranges from 114 to 118 gallons a day and the town wants to cut that to 100 gallons per person per day.[36]

In 2014, Durango engineer and Southwest Roundtable leader Steve Harris crafted a bill that his state senator, Ellen Roberts, carried that tried to limit bluegrass. The bill limited the amount of bluegrass to only 15 percent of the land area in new subdivisions. The bill did not get very far. It was opposed by the Colorado Water Congress and the South Metro Water Supply Authority, which delivers water to Parker and Castle Rock. “You’re destroying the rights of the private homeowner to do what he wants with his property,” Republican Senator Ted Harvey of Highlands Ranch charged.[37]  Rancher Carlyle Currier of Collbran supported the bill at one hearing, saying, “There are few proposals that actually do anything to save ag water. This bill does.”[38] But T. Wright Dickenson, a prominent rancher in Colorado’s northwest corner and a colorful Yampa-White-Green Roundtable member, says “Colorado agriculture has killed bill after bill that requires a certain water supply for new subdivisions, because you kill the farmer’s 401(k) plan.”[39] State Senator Vicki Marble, a Fort Collins Republican, said Colorado needs to build more water storage, not limit on household lawn size. “We can restrict ourselves into oblivion and the greatest Dust Bowl we’ve ever seen,” Marble says.[40] Engineer Beorn Courtney says Sterling Ranch was also concerned that Senator Roberts’ bill was too simplistic by addressing only bluegrass without looking at other water uses. The Sterling Ranch developer prefers to be given a water budget and the latitude to figure out how to meet it. But the developer also wants a level playing field, so that all builders are subject to the same water budget rules. If not, developers will simply purchase greater water supplies from farmers willing to sell, putting developers who proposed limited water budgets at a disadvantage.

One way that cities can grow with the water they have is to pay residents to give up their thirsty lawns. Aurora paid $736,717 to xeriscape 968,278 square feet from 2008 to 2012, about 25 acres[BG3] , through its cash-for-grass program. At $33,000 an acre, the program is expensive, another reason to be waterwise from the start with homes we have not yet built.[41] Aurora believes its program has other benefits including raising awareness about the importance of conserving water use.[42] Participating citizens must attend a xeriscape class and design their landscape together with city officials, replacing at least 60 percent of the former sodded area with native plants. Aurora officials make two follow-up site visits to the property to ensure compliance.

In 2023 Aurora converted 18.72 acres of public landscape from bluegrass to native turf, saving nearly 10 million gallons per year or 1.6 acre-feet per acre.[43] Aurora continues to offer turf replacement rebates for residents, in 2024 offering $3 per square foot to remove turf and another dollar for labor and tool rentals, for a maximum rebate of $4,000 per property and 500 square-feet per year through its Grass Replacement Incentive Program (GRIP).[44]

The City of Boulder has supported Resource Central since 1976, a nonprofit that promotes turf replacement through its popular Garden in a Box program. Residents select xeriscape plants which Resource Central orders in bulk, available for pick-up at 45 different locations throughout the Front Range in May or August-September. Nearly 60 cities and water providers from Fort Collins to Pueblo participate and offer rebates to local residents that sign up with Resource Central. The non-profit has saved 1.5 billion gallons, 4,603 acre-feet, from 2003 through 2023 according to president Neal Lurie.

They don’t just replace bluegrass with rocks and cactus. Customers can choose “at least six choices based on preferences for colors, full sun or shade, and whether attracting pollinators is a goal,” according to Allen Best, the prolific reporter who has focused on Colorado water matters for most of his career.[45] In 2023 they handed out 13,173 boxes to customers replacing 60 to 200 square feet of turf. The boxes go on sale on March 1, and sold out in just four weeks. The CWCB awarded $1.5m to Resource Central in 2023, one of its largest grants ever, noting that 40% of Colorado’s Turf Replacement Program participants already work with Resource Central.[46]

Still, it is quite hard to get rid of thirsty bluegrass.

When the state legislature killed a 2014 bill recommended by Steve Harris of the Southwestern Roundtable to limit bluegrass to no more than 15 percent of new subdivisions, it formed yet another work group to study outdoor landscaping water use.[47] The work group included Green Industries of Colorado, a trade group of landscapers and bluegrass growers whose website proclaims that it is against any water legislation that is anti-growth.[48] GreenCo recommended practices that Las Vegas, Tucson, and much of California have been doing for decades, such as requiring water utilities to adopt water budgets, training landscapers to install and inspect water-wise lawn sprinkler systems, and promoting the use of harvested rainwater and gray water.[49]  But GreenCo’s recommendations do not include limiting bluegrass turf area or selecting drought-tolerant plants. Some of the green circles we see when flying east from DIA airport are growing bluegrass, ready to carpet the next generation of homes in Colorado.  And limiting bluegrass is not on GreenCo’s agenda.

Figures

Figure 13. Relationship in Las Vegas between domestic water cost and use

Figure 13.2 Potential water savings from indoor residential use

Notes

[1] Colorado Water Plan, 2015, Table 6.2-1 Common Themes Across Basin Implementation Plans, pg. 6-17, lists ”Focus on M&I [Municipal and Industrial] gaps” as the first theme of interest for all roundtables.

[2] Stroud, J., “Conservation, urban interests clash at water board meeting,” Sep. 15, 2014, Glenwood Springs Post Independent, https://www.postindependent.com/news/local/conservation-urban-interests-clash-at-water-board-meeting/

[3] The Colorado and Gunnison basins strive for high conservation, as reported in the 2015 Colorado Water Plan, Chapter 6: Water Supply Management — Section 6.2: Meeting Colorado’s Water Gaps, pg. 6-23. The Southwest Basin recommends that existing residents use 60 percent of water indoors and only 40 percent outdoors, and that new subdivisions built by drying up farmland use 70 percent of water indoors and only 30 percent outdoors; pg. 6-28. At present, 58 percent of water is used indoors and 42 percent is used outdoors; SWSI 2010, Appendix L, pg. 44. By setting these targets, the Southwest Basin exceeds the high conservation target in SWSI that I calculate amounts to 137 gallons per person per day. The Yampa-White-Green roundtable does not state what level of conservation it wants to pursue in Colorado’s Water Plan.

[4] Comments made at a panel at a statewide Roundtable summit, March 12, 2015, Westin Hotel, Westminster.

[5] CRS Section 37-99-101, effective August 7. 2024.

[6] Colorado Water Plan, 2015, Chapter 6: Water Supply Management — Section 6.2: Meeting Colorado’s Water Gaps, pg. 6-19, reports that the roundtables can together save 167,000 acre-feet from active conservation by 2050. It is unclear whether these savings will come from existing or future residents, or both. The numbers in the table are from Appendix L, SWSI 2010 Municipal and Industrial Water Conservation Strategies, January 2011, report prepared for the CWCB by Aquacraft Inc. & Headwaters Corp., pages 9-10, and Table 17, pg. 63.

[7] Appendix L, SWSI 2010 Municipal and Industrial Water Conservation Strategies, January 2011, report prepared for the CWCB by Aquacraft Inc. & Headwaters Corp., pages 9-10, and Table 17, pg. 63.

[8] Waterwise Summer 04, a Publication of the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

[9] Western Resource Advocates, Dec. 2003, Smart Water a Comparative Study of Urban Water Use Efficiency Across the Southwest, Chap. 3: Comparative Analysis of Water Providers in the Southwest: Water Use and Demand-Side Efficiency, pg. 78, http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/hearings/cachuma/comments_rdeir/pacific_institute/4otherreports/wra_ch3smartwater2003.pdf.

[10] Pacific Institute, 1999, Sustainable Use of Water California Success Stories, Chap. 4: Reducing Water Use in Residential, Industrial, and Municipal Landscapes, pg. 61.

[11] 2022 South Platte Basin Implementation Plan, Vol. 1, pg. 45.

[12] From 1950 to 2020, Nevada grew 4.3% per year, the fastest of any state; “US Population by State from 1900,” Demographia, based on data from the Data from US Census Bureau; https://www.demographia.com/db-state1900.htm. From 2022 to 2050, Nevada is predicted to grow .96% per year, third fastest behind Utah and Idaho, and just ahead of Colorado; "Total Population for the U.S., the 50 States, and the District of Columbia: Census 2020 and Projections 2030-2050," Released on July 1, 2024 by the University of Virginia, Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, https://www.coopercenter.org/national-population-projections.                                                                                                                                                                                                               

[13] From 1900 to 2010, Nevada’s population grew 3.9 percent per year, a rate that doubles every 18 years.  Since 1950, it has grown 4.8 percent per year, doubling every 15 years.  Both are fastest among all states. For 2010 population figures, see http://www.thegreenpapers.com/Census10/HouseAndElectors.phtml. For 1900-2000, see http://www.demographia.com/db-state1900.htm.

[14] Comment made at a joint roundtable meeting of Front Range and Western Slope roundtables in Silverthorne, December 3, 2012.

[15] CRS § 37-96-103, Requirement of water conservation in landscaping for certain public projects.

[16] Colorado WaterWise Guidebook of Best Practices for Municipal Water Conservation in Colorado.

[17] According to Wikipedia, last modified May 15, 2016, Highlands Ranch had 35,167 housing units; at 27 gallons per square foot, the assumed 4,500 square feet per housing unit requires 8,473 acre feet. At 15 gallons per square foot, the same number of residences with 4,500 square feet of landscaping in Boulder would require 4,573 acre-feet, a savings of 3,900 acre-feet (46 percent). CWCB, 2010, Colorado WaterWise Guidebook of Best Practices for Municipal Water Conservation in Colorado, pg. 105-106.

[18] CRS § 37-60-126(2). House Bill 2010-1051 amended CRS § 37-60-126(4.5) to require utilities delivering at least 2,000 acre feet to report water use and efficiency data in a standardized format that can be used in SWSI reporting.

[19] CRS § 37-60-126(11).

[20] CWCB Memo on CRS 37-60-1026 (4.5) reporting to the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee and House of Representatives Rural Affairs and Agriculture Committee, 2/1/2019, https://leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/files/images/committees/2017/cwcb_1051_leg_memo_01-30-19.pdf.

[21] The closest I came to finding a comparison list of water used by Colorado cities was a website blog which lists water use by cities around the West including eight Colorado cities between 1983 and 1998. “Water Use Per Person Per Day Compared,” BASIN Boulder Area Sustainability Information Network, downloaded June 3, 2016, http://bcn.boulder.co.us/basin/local/use.html.

[22] Colorado’s Water Plan, 2015, pg. 14.

[23] Colorado Water Plan, 2023, pg. 4.

[24] The table in the text was created from multiple website sources downloaded in December 2011. For current use of 92 gallons per day, see SWSI 2010, Appendix L, page 44. For consumption calculators, see, http://www.csgnetwork.com/waterusagecalc.html.

[25] Morin, M., “Americans use twice as much water as they think they do, study says,” Mar. 3, 2014, Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-americans-underestimate-personal-water-usage-study-says-20140227-story.html.

[26]Beckwith, D., “Other States’ Policies to Reduce Outdoor Water Use,” Jan-Feb 2015, CSU Water Center, Colorado Water, Vol. 32 Issue 1, pg. 8, https://issuu.com/coloradowater/docs/coloradowater_v32-i1_web_version3-f.

[27] California AB 06-1881.

[28] Rick Brinkman, Water Services Manager at Grand Junction, reported on its conservation program at a joint roundtable meeting between the Colorado and Denver Metro/South Platte Basins on December 3, 2012, in Silverthorne.

[29] Sackett H., Lassalle L., “Crystal River mapping project,” Aspen Journalism, March 10, 2024, https://aspenjournalism.org/crystal-river-mapping-project/.

[30] “Bluegrass,” last modified Feb. 7, 2015, Wikipedia. Poa pratensis was one of the many species described by Carl Linnaeus in his landmark work Species Plantarum in 1753; “Kentucky bluegrass,” last modified May 24, 2016, Wikipedia.

[31] Simon, S., “In Arid West, Thirsty Lawns Get Cut From Plans,” Oct. 13, 2009, The Wall Street Journal, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB125538486262481183. Rebchook, J., “Sterling Ranch lands water-pilot program,” July 22, 2010, Inside Real Estate News.

[32] Illescas, C., “Douglas County approves long-contested Sterling Ranch development,” Denver Post, May 3, 2016, https://www.denverpost.com/2011/05/11/douglas-county-approves-long-contested-sterling-ranch-development/

[33] Kohler, J., “Water vs. growth: Colorado communities, developers struggle to juggle both,” Denver Post, May 30, 2023, https://www.denverpost.com/2023/05/30/colorado-water-growth-pressures-conservation-reuse-sterling-ranch/. The Denver average home value is from "Land Prices for 46 Metro Areas," Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, downloaded Nov. 20, 2016, http://datatoolkits.lincolninst.edu/subcenters/land-values/metro-area-land-prices.asp.

[34] Smith, J., “Aurora’s recycled water plant running at full-tilt,” Water Education Colorado, July 18, 2018, https://www.watereducationcolorado.org/fresh-water-news/full-tilt-aurora-boosts-recycled-water-ops-90-to-cope-with-this-summers-drought/#/

[35] Aurora, Colorado, “Innovation & Sustainability,” downloaded November 11, 2024, https://www.auroragov.org/residents/water/innovation#:~:text=Referred%20to%20as%20gallons%20per,in%20the%20Colorado%20Water%20Plan.

[36] Castle Rock Water Performance Information, Town of Castle Rock, downloaded November 12, 2024, https://www.crgov.com/2813/Castle-Rock-Water-Performance-Informatio#:~:text=Water%20consumption,the%2020%20years%20is%20out.

[37] Hanel , J., “Ellen Roberts’ bill to limit lawn size gains traction,” Feb. 6, 2014, Durango Herald. https://www.durangoherald.com/articles/ellen-roberts-bill-to-limit-lawn-size-gains-traction/https://www.durangoherald.com/articles/ellen-roberts-bill-to-limit-lawn-size-gains-traction/

[38] Hanel, J., footnote 35.

[39] Comment made at a joint meeting of the four Western Slope roundtables on December 18, 2014, held at the Ute Water Conservancy District, Grand Junction.

[40] “Lawn limits considered, then rejected in Colorado,” Feb. 22, 2014, The Gazette, http://gazette.com/lawn-limits-considered-then-rejected-in-colorado/article/1515222.

[41] WaterWise gardening is a style of gardening that uses little or no water in a landscape, resulting in financial and natural resource savings. See Oregon State University Extension Service, “WaterWise Gardening,” downloaded June 20, 2016, http://extension.oregonstate.edu/yamhill/eco-gardening/waterwise-gardening.

[42] Cities interested in implementing cash for grass programs should see Daniel McSwain’s survey of 33 cash for grass programs across the US, Local Governments and Water Conservation: Case Studies in Lawn Conversion Programs, 2013, http://www.academia.edu/4145842/Local_Governments_and_Water_Conservation_Case_Studies_in_Lawn_Conversion_Programs_Dan_Mac_Swain.

[43] “Turf Conversion & Water Conservation,” City of Aurora, downloaded 12-22-24, https://www.auroragov.org/things_to_do/parks__open_space___trails/park_listing/planning__design___construction/turf_conversion___water_conservation

[44] “Landscape Design Program,” City of Aurora, downloaded Dec. 22, 2024, https://www.auroragov.org/residents/water/landscaping/landscape_design_program

[45] Best, A., “The outliers in urban residential landscaping: Why these homeowners tore out their turf,” Colorado Newsline, Dec. 5, 2023, https://coloradonewsline.com/2023/12/05/urban-residential-landscaping-turf/

[46] Drugan T., “Want to say goodbye to your thirsty Boulder lawn? ‘Garden in a Box’ offers native grasses that use half the water,” Boulder Reporting Lab, Mar. 5, 2023, https://boulderreportinglab.org/2023/03/05/want-to-say-goodbye-to-your-thirsty-boulder-lawn-garden-in-a-box-offers-native-grasses-that-use-half-the-water.

[47] SB 14-017 was sponsored by Western Slope Senator Roberts (Durango – Rep) and Representative Coram (Montrose – Rep), and by East slope Senator Hodge (Adams – Dem) and Representative Vigil (Alamosa – Dem).

[48] GreenCO, which stands for Green Industries of Colorado, is a lobbying group composed of seven landscaping industries including the Associated Landscape Contractors of Colorado, Colorado Arborists and Lawn Care Professionals, Colorado Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects, Colorado Nursery & Greenhouse Association, Garden Centers of Colorado, International Society of Arboriculture, Rocky Mountain Chapter, and the Rocky Mountain Sod Growers Association. It has a PAC that raises lobbying funds. Included among its 2015 Legislative Priorities is the statement, “Oppose water legislation that is anti-growth.”  See, “Legislative Affairs,” downloaded March 8, 2016, http://www.greenco.org/advocacy.html. See, O’Brien, B., “How Green Industry Best Management Practices Support Senate Bill 14-017,” p. 10, CSU Water Center, Jan/Feb 2015, Vol. 32, Issue 1. O’Brien, the author of the article, is a GreenCo consultant.

[49] Outdoor Water use in Colorado, A Growing Concern, P. Lander, Colorado Water, CSU Water Center, p. 14

 [BG1]There has been a new law passed in the last year or so.

 [KR2]Yes, Dylan Roberts sponsored it. I discuss it above on page 3-4, FN 5.

 [BG3]Update this from 2012