Grave concerns

By Ed Koch

Monday, Feb. 20, 2006 | 12:34 p.m.

The grass growing over a single grave plot in the Las Vegas Valley requires enough irrigation water to fill 30 bathtubs a year.

With Southern Nevada the home to tens of thousands of graves in hundreds of acres of cemeteries, it's little wonder that the Las Vegas Valley Water District is advocating the use of artificial turf in the water-starved region.

But the thought of burying a loved one under a carpet of green plastic makes some people cringe. Even so, about 200 miles southwest of Las Vegas, a small Apple Valley, Calif., cemetery is in the midst of a bold three-year experiment to replace all of its five acres of grass with artificial turf - and they are using a product produced by a Las Vegas company.

"People just generally don't like change," said Chet Hitt, owner of the Sunset Hills Memorial Park in Apple Valley, where cowboy stars Roy Rogers and Dale Evans are buried under a plush green carpet of Virtual Lawn fake turf.

"Real grass has been what has been used for so long that people have difficulty accepting anything else," Hitt said. "You have to get customers to buy into the fact it is good for the environment and the economy."

Local cemetery officials say that, while they are replacing turf in favor of drought-friendly desert landscaping in nongrave areas, they are not ready to go to fake grass around headstones.

The water district says that, though it enforces laws limiting the watering of home lawns and golf courses, it draws the line at requiring synthetic grass at cemeteries.

Hitt conceded that he had been concerned about making the change because he knew that when people think of artificial turf, the first thing that comes to mind is ugly, hard, lime green Astroturf, the type used for ballfields.

"I decided to install artificial turf in a small area of the cemetery without telling anyone," Hitt said. People began asking why cemetery workers were not installing such good-looking turf over their loved ones' graves. "When I told them it was not genuine grass, they were surprised."

Sunset Hills has replaced about half of its turf with the low-maintenance fake stuff and is on track to save $126,000 in maintenance costs and $54,000 in water expenses between 2004, when the project began, and 2007, when the last of the artificial product is installed, Hitt said.

A few years ago, Hitt attended a home products show where Mike Monko, an ornamental horticulturist for 25 years, had abandoned real grass and was introducing his own model of plastic grass. Monko opened Virtual lawn five years ago at 310 W. Utah Ave., off Charleston Boulevard.

While Monko has installed his pseudo grass at small local resorts, several apartment complexes and the backstop halo at Chaparral High School's baseball field, he said he does not have a single local cemetery as a customer.

"I think it is short-sightedness on their part," Monko said.

"Another reason is that switching from turf to artificial grass is expensive and it could take about five years to recoup those costs in water and maintenance savings. That for some is a big issue."

For example, to replace 97,000 square feet of turf with plastic grass would cost $582,000, Monko said.

Such a large amount of money is not in some local cemeteries' budgets.

"Although we use desert landscaping in common areas and we try to conserve water other ways, we just do not have the funds to replace our grass with artificial turf," said Jack Porrino, superintendent of the 80-acre Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City.

"It might be a viable alternative 10 years down the road," Porrino said. "But the price is going to have to come down significantly. Right now there are too many variables, but there definitely is a need to conserve water."

While the water district echoes that sentiment, it is not of a mind to force cemeteries to remove their real turf.

"We have not aggressively pursued cemeteries," water district spokesman J.C. Davis said. "They have a customer base that expects the use of real grass. You have to be sensitive to making changes that can fundamentally affect someone's core business.

Davis said some cemeteries also are voluntarily doing things to save water, noting that Palm Mortuary-Eastern has removed the turf from its nonburial areas and has replaced it with drought-resistant landscaping.

"We had a focus group for putting in desert landscaping (over the grave areas) and the resounding response was that people wanted their loved ones buried under real grass," said Palm spokesman Ned Phillips.

Phillips said that while fake grass might work for a five-acre cemetery like Sunset Hills, it would not be practical for Palm, the largest mortuary business in the valley with four cemeteries that total about 200 acres.

Phillips said Palm also is studying drought-friendly turf like Bermuda grass, which stays green in the summer and is dormant in the winter, requiring less water.

Ed Koch can be reached at 259-4090 or at [email protected].