Steve Harris, of Durango, had a good time Friday afternoon hosting “Lawn Be Gone,” a working celebration eased with beer, chips and shrimp to eliminate the patch of grass in the backyard of his house.
Guests were offered a shovel to take several swipes at uprooting the sod; a contractor, Harris said, would do the rest in the coming days.
Harris is a longtime water engineer who had been saying for weeks that he was ready to practice what he preaches: It is time to use less water in Colorado, and he would make a statement by eliminating his bluegrass.
The size of Harris’ lawn was modest, and it played only a limited role in the appearance of his backyard. The view looking north to the Animas Valley was where the eye naturally fell; for appearances, the grass was expendable. Nor did Harris care where he wanted the saved water to go – to be able to forever wash his car at the curb or to a family moving here from California. Getting rid of the need for the water was what this gathering with a message was all about. It was the principle.
(Why didn’t Harris sell the sod, which looked very healthy after a week of rain? No, that would not help. It’s the principle, he said.)
Harris has been a significant part of the increasingly serious conversations in the state about water conservation. Driven partly by inconsistent snowfall in recent years, the heightened awareness of the condition of the Colorado River at Lake Mead and Lake Powell and the extensive publicity surrounding California’s water-critical condition, water-savvy residents of the river basins in Colorado at Gov. John Hickenlooper’s urging have been contributing to the construction of a state water plan.
There may be some limited additional water storage in the plan, but more effective water uses with plenty of conservation are at the plan’s core.
The plan — in the draft stage — looks to link water use on the lightly populated Western Slope with the Front Range. Eighty-percent of the water and only 20 percent of the population may be on the Western Slope, but expect the two sides of the divide to soon handle water uses largely as one. The conservation goals in the state plan may well be identical for Denver, Fort Collins, Durango and Grand Junction.
For the Western Slope, limits to trans-mountain diversions are an upper-most concern. The Front Range is thirsty and, in the coming years, will be thirstier. What should the Front Range do in terms of conservation before the Western Slope will agree to participate in sending more water through the mountains?
Water use in Colorado is complex; witness the recent debate in the Legislature about whether homeowners should be able to catch and store rainwater from their roofs.
And it is certain to get more complex as more conservation comes into play. Coloradans will become even more familiar with the term “consumptive use,” rather than simply “use,” for example.
Harris, who has a knack for the quirky, may have a bumper sticker in mind. Perhaps something like “My lawn is gone, is yours?”
The message, “Lawn Be Gone,” offers a lot of possibilities, which, in the coming years, will increasingly be a part of our lives.