This gardener service cost savings should really be accounted for in estimates of the time to recoup costs when a plastic lawn replaces a real one.
I thought the the article did a good job as presenting two sides. Lawns relative to agriculture do not use up a lot of water. However, lawns do use a lot of water relative to other household usages.
Edit: I'm not seeing any substantive analysis on maintenance, though, they do claim:
"Because water is so cheap, the financial payback period of
replacing your lawn with a more drought tolerant substitute
is around 30 years."I live in a fairly upscale community (mostly hobby farms and retired farmers who sold off most of their land) and no-one around here has someone else doing their gardening. If anything, my neighbors are the ones who own lawn care/property management businesses.