City to pull grass along three roads

By Jeremy Twitchell

Thursday, Dec. 11, 2008 | midnight

The grass along Green Valley and Silver Springs parkways and Valle Verde Drive will soon be torn out and replaced with desert landscaping.

As part of its ongoing effort to conserve water, the Henderson Parks and Recreation Department will remove turf on the few stretches of street landscaping it maintains. The work is expected to begin in February and be finished by the end of March.

Though Parks and Recreation doesn't normally care for street landscaping around the city, it does maintain the landscaping in the north part of Green Valley as part of an agreement reached in the 1980s with developer American Nevada Company when Green Valley began construction.

The American Nevada Company, like the Home News, is a subsidiary of the Greenspun Corporation.

The city plans to remove 60,000 square feet of non-functional turf along the streets, which would save about 3.3 million gallons of water per year. Parks and Recreation has already removed more than 1 million square feet of non-functional turf from various Henderson parks.

Street landscaping is a priority target, Dominick Casey, assistant director of Parks and Recreation, said.

"Because they are sloped and along the road, these areas are premiere water wasters, and they're easily seen," Casey said.

Casey said the city's turf conversion program was a tough sell to the community when it began four years ago, but it has steadily grown since then.

"We take a lot of pride in what we're seeing around the valley right now," Casey said. "Particularly in the Green Valley area, you're seeing a lot of these turf conversions."

Perhaps the best part is that the conversions don't cost the city anything, Casey said. All of the work is funded by the Southern Nevada Water Authority's Turf Conversion Rebate and grants from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and the city saves money on its water bill, he said.

"We save money without even spending money," Casey said.

Jeremy Twitchell can be reached at 990-8928 or [email protected].