How Las Vegas Made Tearing Out Grass a National Water Model

Las Vegas sits in the driest major metropolitan area in the United States, drawing roughly 90 percent of its water from a Colorado River reservoir that recently hit record lows. Yet the region has managed to grow while using less water overall — a feat built on an unglamorous strategy: removing grass.

Closing the indoor loop

Nearly all water used indoors in southern Nevada is treated and returned to Lake Mead, earning the region return-flow credits. That effectively makes indoor use a closed loop and shifts the entire water-conservation challenge outdoors, where water evaporates or soaks into the ground and cannot be recovered.

The turf war

The Southern Nevada Water Authority responded with cash-for-grass rebates and, eventually, a first-in-the-nation ban on 'nonfunctional' decorative turf — the strips of grass along roads and in office parks that no one walks on. Together these programs have removed hundreds of millions of square feet of grass.

The model is now being studied and replicated from St. George, Utah to Phoenix, Arizona, as the entire Colorado River basin confronts a permanently drier future.