California adopts strict lawn-reduction rules
By Phillip Reese, Dale Kasler and Ryan Sabalow, Sacramento Bee
The era of lush, green lawns adorning new California homes moved a dramatic step closer to ending Wednesday.
Drought-tolerant plants must dominate lawns around new homes and businesses across California under new regulations unanimously approved by the California Water Commission.
The new rules effectively limit the amount of turf grass around newly constructed homes to 25 percent of landscaped area. Under prior rules, turf grass could take up about one-third of landscaped area.
The restrictions will apply to all homes with more than 500 square feet of landscaped area – essentially, all new, single-family, detached homes in the state. Old rules only applied to new homes with more than 2,500 square feet of landscaped area. California homes, on average, feature about 2,500 square feet of landscaping, state officials said.
I’m glad the state is looking into water conservation regarding lawns. Contact STPUD about the turf buy back program, it’s “well” worth it! Save our wells!
You’ll be surprized what you can do wih native plants, wildfowers and vegetables.
Use a watering can for your plants and water what is needed instead of watering bare dirt or a dead lawn.
Take care and conserve water.Once it’s gone, it’s gone.
Old Long Skiis
Like it or not, water meters with charges billed by successively increasing consumption tiers are the only solution. The Water Police are only a token gesture, are they out at 2 AM? Heck no.
Actually, they’re out at all kinds of hours. Our sprinklers went on around 5 AM, and because of a programming glitch (those timers are complicated) it went on on the wrong days. Still alternating, 3X weekly, but because it was not the right “odd” day, we got the nasty letter threatening a fine.
Nice. . .
1/4 of a half acre lot is still a lot more than 1/3 of a 5K square foot lot. . . The state doesn’t REALLY care about conservation. It’s power and money.
I make sure the plants in the roof drip line are kept healthy. Try to mulch as possible too. All the neighbors water that gushes off the lot to where I live is dammed to a tree. Lots of green off the dammed water.
Perry.. That is an interesting idea about plants growing along the drip line.
Drip Line Plants
Do they qualify as BMP worthy, or do you still need to have the gravel trench under the dripline ?