Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2004 | 11:09 a.m.
With four man-made lakes in the center of its 682 acres, the Desert Shores community in the northwest Las Vegas Valley is probably not the place that comes to mind when people think about conserving water.
But the Southern Nevada Water Authority says that a new conservation program at Desert Shores, an upscale community in the northwest Las Vegas Valley, is the biggest single residential effort in the two years the agency has promoted turf removal as a way to save water.
The community of about 2,700 homes and 300 apartments and condominiums has begun work to remove more than 400,000 square feet of water-hungry grass turf and replace it with desert landscaping.
Doug Bennett, Southern Nevada Water Authority conservation manager, said the project is a milestone of sorts.
"Short of work that's been done on golf courses, this is the single largest residential conversion," Bennett said.
The work should remove 400,000 square feet of turf in its first two phases, which should be completed before the start of the heavy watering season next summer, said Rita Peterson, general manager of the Desert Shores Community Association. The total square footage to be removed in a third phase has not yet been determined, she said.
The cost of the conversion from turf to desert landscaping should cost about $700,000, but the community association will receive at least $193,000 in a rebate from the water authority. Also, the removal of the high-water-use turf will save the community 18 million gallons of water annually, and cut more than $44,000 -- about a third -- off the community's annual water bill.
The authority has over the last two years rebated more than $31 million to area residents and business owners who have removed nearly 37 million square feet of turf, a process that has saved, the agency estimates, more than 2 billion gallons of water annually.
The largest residential desert landscaping, or xeriscaping, project done to date is the 300,000-square-foot effort at Parkway Villas on Century Garden Drive in Las Vegas about a half-mile northeast of McCarran International Airport.
Since January, more than 200 homeowners associations have participated in the conservation program, collectively converting more than 3.5 million square feet of grass to desert landscaping with a savings of about 195 million gallons of water annually.
Bennett said he hopes the work at Desert Shores will promote similar efforts for other communities.
"They are one of the very conspicuous communities in terms of ornamental turf," he said. "Obviously, other similar communities look to their peers. It also has to do with how it's implemented and how it will look over time, but it does have a big impact."
The look of the finished work will likely have a lot to do with how other communities approach turf-conversion projects, Bennett said.
Peterson believes the final product will be better than the grass it replaces. The upgrade was designed by landscape architects J.W. Zunino & Associates and the work is being done by Jaramillo Landscape and Maintenance Co. The final plan calls for vegetative cover of trees and shrubs across crushed granite.
Jim Carollo, a five-year Desert Shores resident and chairman of the 22-person landscape committee of residents who worked to develop the conversion project, said the impetus to do the job was to save water, but the result should improve life in the community.
"The main thing was water savings," Carollo said. "We get a lot of flak about our lakes, but to follow through on the thoughts of the water authority, we wanted to save water and the best thing was to look at the turf."
Carollo, a horticulturalist at Angel Park Golf Course, said the residents' committee worked on the issue for almost a year. The plan now calls for 240 new trees and 8,000 shrubs.
"I think it's going to help it (the ambiance) a great deal," he said. "I think xeriscape, done properly, looks better than grass. What we didn't do, which most retrofit does, is just put a stick in the rock kind of thing.
"We wanted to be one of the leaders as far as the residential communities go," Carollo said. "I'm very proud to be involved in it."
The lakes that have generated some community concern during this time of drought -- the worst in the recorded history of the Colorado River -- are not likely to go anywhere. In the late 1980s, the Legislature specifically allowed the Desert Shores water features and several other man-made lakes, including Lake Las Vegas. New lakes of this sort, however, are banned.
Peterson, with the Desert Shores Community Association, said the lakes are more than a feature for the residents; they also serve as an amenity to the surrounding community, which has public access to the lake shores.
She said while the lakes are here to stay, it doesn't mean the residents of Desert Shores aren't eager to cut water use where they can.
"By doing this, we're showing that we can be concerned citizens," Peterson said.
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