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Don’t ban it but make it costly. Anyone who wants it can pay for it.
That only works to a point. There are quite a few millionaires that use up a large portion of the water watering their lush green landscapes. I'm usually for limited government, but in this case we have no choice. Just look at Lake Mead, case closed.
What? So what is your solution to our water problems here? Your post comes off as very much NIMBY.
Funny. I was trying to come across as not bringing my politics from California. Lol. Can't win! If I come here and change all the laws I am a Californian bringing my politics and if I say don't enact more laws I become a NIMBY!? Ok!
Funny. I was trying to come across as not bringing my politics from California. Lol. Can't win! If I come here and change all the laws I am a Californian bringing my politics and if I say don't enact more laws I become a NIMBY!? Ok!
Maybe you could try answering the actual question asked?
I thought Nevada was about less restrictions and less laws!? I vote NO ban! Let California enact such a law but not Nevada! If municipalities want to rip out ornamental lawns, as was done in my almost former home in California, then so beit. Don't need a law for it though!
Nevada is usually about leave me alone type but when it comes to water, we all have to share it alike and we all have to conserve it alike. No matter how much a gallon of water is to water the Millionaire's grass, the water level at Lake mead gets screwed. We can't use those $1000/gallon on grass water to import water from somewhere like the mississippi river or the great lakes. so until we find a solution to replenish the water leve in Lake Mead, we just have to start banning ornamental grass. When I went to Hoover dam in 2000, I barely saw that ring, but now that ring is, I dunno about 50 feet tall? It's not getting better and we're increasing our population here.
I agree, we must get CA to ban their grass in the medians and street dividers, it's pretty and nice but it's not walked on and must be eliminated.
I dont know if you remember but back in the old days cars didn't have catalytic converters to catch some of the smog and pollutants and the air was filthy, but after we had these laws on the books for decades, our air pollution has gone down dramatically. We could have said, if you want to drive clean prius type cars go ahead but we don't need laws for it though as air blows and cleans up after rain.
It sounds totally drastic to ban grass but in terms of how much water is used, I agree. I almost think we need to look at the water usage in terms of nuts grown in Cali too. Almond takes up to 10 times more water or something to that effect than other nuts/fruit and I think they should limit the amount of nuts you can grow that are heavy water dependent products.
Don’t ban it but make it costly. Anyone who wants it can pay for it.
Water rates are the same for everyone so how do we raise water rates for one house that has grass vs the next that doesn't? How do we charge more for those with pools that evaporate more than others with covers or don't have pools? It's not like a mileage tax at the gas pump or something.
Also, mileage tax is needed b/c those with electric cars that don't pay for the road tax that regular people pay at the gas pump to the tune of 30-60 cents a gallon. That's a tax on the poor and free tax breaks for the tesla crowd.
BTW tesla's are heavier than same size gas cars so they wear/tear more on the road. So we should tax them for miles driven, like we do for cars that use pump gas.
How about anyone who wants grass can import the water they want to use to feed it? Make their home water the same but irrigation water disconnected from the water source. That way they can pay a tanker to bring them 1000 gallons of water each month. I don't know where they put that water tank but at least that way they are paying for it.
I see the point but it's not really fair, when you consider that people topping up their swimming pools to replace evaporation loss use more water than it takes to water a small lawn. Also, people could use gray water on their lawn, or plant a drought resistant type. Better to simply have an inclining rate structure and charge a lot more for water above the average inside use, 80-100 GPD, and let the consumer choose how they use the higher cost water or not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RationalExpectations
It turns out that's not true. It takes more water to keep grass green than the evaporation replenishment amount for a swimming pool of the same surface area.
I like this discussion, anyone have actual facts and data with links for us to read?
Nevada is usually about leave me alone type but when it comes to water, we all have to share it alike and we all have to conserve it alike. No matter how much a gallon of water is to water the Millionaire's grass, the water level at Lake mead gets screwed. We can't use those $1000/gallon on grass water to import water from somewhere like the mississippi river or the great lakes. so until we find a solution to replenish the water leve in Lake Mead, we just have to start banning ornamental grass. When I went to Hoover dam in 2000, I barely saw that ring, but now that ring is, I dunno about 50 feet tall? It's not getting better and we're increasing our population here.
I agree, we must get CA to ban their grass in the medians and street dividers, it's pretty and nice but it's not walked on and must be eliminated.
I dont know if you remember but back in the old days cars didn't have catalytic converters to catch some of the smog and pollutants and the air was filthy, but after we had these laws on the books for decades, our air pollution has gone down dramatically. We could have said, if you want to drive clean prius type cars go ahead but we don't need laws for it though as air blows and cleans up after rain.
It sounds totally drastic to ban grass but in terms of how much water is used, I agree. I almost think we need to look at the water usage in terms of nuts grown in Cali too. Almond takes up to 10 times more water or something to that effect than other nuts/fruit and I think they should limit the amount of nuts you can grow that are heavy water dependent products.
Agreed, the wasteful water use of farming (antiquated watering processes and crops like almonds) in CA and AZ are the culprit. I don’t know exactly but off the top of my head, 60% of the Colorado goes to farming. I think NV gets about 2% of the whole water allocation, which is pretty minimal considering the population it supports.
It’s going to take a cross state effort to manage the water appropriately, unfortunately the original archaic water agreement that was drafted when the dam was first built has been binding for all of these years and really handicaps how the water can be conserved and reallocated.
All that being said, anything that helps conserve water should be supported. We live in the middle of a desert, it makes zero sense to grow grass here unless it serves a shared purpose such as a park, ball field or limited golf courses.
There should be a tiered pricing for water use, as its should 3x-10x in price with each step increase of gallon usage. Create a massive economic disincentive for people who want to grow grass.
Dom, NINETY percent of the water that is used in CO goes to agricultural uses, yes, 90%. Only 10% goes to cities and only half of that goes to lawn uses, i.e., only 5% of the water that is used in CO is for lawns. NOTE to casual readers, I'm talking only about that water in COLO that is used in COLO; a lot of the water in COLO flows out of the state to other western states.
I chafe at how wasteful much agricultural irrigation is, spraying massive amounts on the plants where a sizable portion just evaporates.
What really chafes me is dry states like TX, AZ and CA grow cotton by depleting aquifers of ancient water that took thousands of years to accumulate. Worse, they grow this cotton with imported brown skinned labor that places demands on our social services and then they ship the damned cotton to India where low wage brown skinned workers make textiles for the same British firms that bought cotton from old slave plantations back east. To this day the Brits make fat profits in textiles from American cotton farmed by brown skinned people and woven in India by brown skinned people all of which makes me say that we STILL are nothing but a colony for the Brits. We did the dirty work of slave plantations, then we did the dirty work of sharecropping former slaves and poor whites, and now we do the dirty work of exploiting hungry migrants. Anyone see a trend here. . . .
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Have any of you been to Lake Mead recently? We just went out there last month. The water levels are dangerously low. You can see the water line on the rocks and it's the size of a football field or longer. They already moved the docks further out for it according to locals who live out there. They say they've never seen it this low in at least 30 years they told us.
We don't have the water resources for all the incoming people over the next decade. Our capacity is limited unless we can pull mass amounts of water from the air. I say do away with the ornamental grass. Every bit adds up. Though according to climate change predictions we all won't want to be living here in 30 years anyways. Summer is already six months out of the year here. I can't imagine it getting longer and hotter than it already is.
You don't want to get me started on climate science. Wait. Never mind. I'm just going to tell you here and now because you need to know if you've never looked into it. I don't know who needs to hear this but according to the climate scientist all life on the planet will die in 79 years by 2100. We are in a mass extinction event. This is the last century on this planet if we don't stop fossil fuels and all carbon emission on the planet in the next 7 years. That's why Greta Thunberg is so upset if you ever wondered why.
It's very difficult looking at this century knowing it's our last as all life on the planet will die in 79 years, because we didn't stop the corporations who are the highest emitters of pollution decades ago when the climate science research came out and warned us.
The research says the oceans will be so warm that the phytoplankton in the ocean will stop their photosynthesis and die. It creates two thirds of the world's oxygen. Thus killing off all life on the planet. We're at 1.5 C and we're not supposed to go past 2 C but we're projected to go up two more degrees heating up the planet and melting the polar ice caps thus raising the sea levels. They had originally predicted that 2C was the turning point but it turned out to be 1.5C that showed mass effects of climate change such as the freeze in Texas that killed nearly 200 people when the power went out.
In 30 years by 2050 (mid-century) several coastal cities will be under water from the sea levels rising. In America it is estimated to affect 50 million people. Globally it affects 150 (140–170) million people in the future who will be permanently below the high tide line. From mid-century on its all downhill until all life basically chokes to death. I won't live to see the end but the children born now will. This is in the NYTs. You can look it all up and see which costal cities will be under water. There's a lot more but again I won't get into it all.
What they're proposing now for climate policy in switching to a green economy is not nearly enough. It's already too late in my opinion. Over twenty years ago in my Earth Science course in middle school they said if the primary pollinators go so do the human species and now we have three species of bees on the endangered species list and the butterflies. These are our primary pollinators. I never thought I'd see that in my life. The animals lined up to go extinct in my life time I never thought I'd see go extinct either but here we are. They also said if the great barrier reef went then we were goners and scientists declared it dead a few years ago as over 60% of it is bleached. We are over fishing and polluting and killing our oceans which keeps our planet alive. We were warned decades ago about this but greed got the best of us and destroyed it all essentially. There will be no future generations to look back on us and learn from it.
Last edited by Merrily Gather; 04-14-2021 at 01:52 AM..
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