Council approves turf limit

Tuesday, Aug. 11, 1998 | 10:53 a.m.

If the city of Las Vegas doesn't start taking serious water-conservation measures now, Nevada will not be taken seriously when it tries to negotiate for future water resources.

So said members of the Las Vegas City Council before unanimously passing an ordinance Monday that will limit the use of turf in future developments.

"This is not a war on turf -- everybody likes grass," Las Vegas Mayor Jan Laverty Jones said Monday before the council voted 5-0 to limit turf used in the front yards of single-family homes to 50 percent, and in multi-family homes, apartments and condominiums to 30 percent.

"But at the pace we are going now, we will be out of water sometime in 2015. ... Per capita, we use three times more water than an average California resident."

Councilman Arnie Adamsen said there has been a "huge misunderstanding" about the bill that has drawn criticism from some city residents who initially thought they would have to rip out their front lawns.

Adamsen said that will not happen because the bill addresses new development only and "is far less restrictive than in some Arizona cities."

Adamsen and Jones said that unless water-conservation efforts are increased in the city, state water officials will be hindered when they attempt to negotiate future acre-feet of water from the Colorado River and other sources.

The new ordinance also prohibits turf in public-facility areas except for schools, parks and cemeteries, limits the use of turf in commercial districts to 25 percent and allows just five acres of turf per hole at golf courses.

Southern Nevada Water Authority officials project that in the first year of the city's turf-restriction ordinance, 98 million gallons of water will be saved. In five years that translates to a savings of 1.5 billion gallons of water, assuming a continuation of the current average of 20,000 new homes built in the city each year.

Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, hailed the council's action, calling it a move that will help protect "the community's most precious resource."

The measure calls for more desert landscaping -- called xeriscaping -- to replace turf. Such desert vegetation requires significantly less water than grass.

At an earlier committee meeting, Councilman Michael McDonald had voted against recommending the measure for approval, saying he feared it would limit Las Vegans' control over what they could do with their private property.

McDonald on Monday said that while he still was concerned about private-property rights and wants children to have enough open grassy areas on which to play, he said the bill is necessary to help stem the flow of water "down the gutter."

No one among the council, city staff or the public spoke against the measure. Either it had won widespread support or opponents simply felt they would be wasting their time by fighting what appeared to be a done deal.

Also on Monday, the council unanimously approved a similar land-use measure that will create more open space and common recreational facilities in residential planned developments.

The plan had come under fire from the Southern Nevada Homebuilders Association, which claimed it was too restrictive. However, a spokesman for that organization at Monday's meeting said his group now supports the measure because of changes hammered out in committee meetings.

One of the changes was to allow as part of the open-space requirements certain streetscape improvements such as the placing of trees and shrubs. Another was to allow streetscaping on both sides of a street to count as part of the interior landscaping.