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In Irvine, California, homes are plumbed with two water lines: potable, and greywater. So even in the middle of a drought, everything is green.

More waste: now there is an extra water system to maintain and repair.

Define “extra”

Do you consider hot/cold plumbing to be two systems?

Yes, I do. One is connected to the mains water, while the other goes through a series of pipes to the boiler.

Yup, that’s a great start. There’s a lot more that can be done. For example, there are better ways to treat blackwater than dumping it into a septic tank and a leach field. Incorporating and cycling blackwater through plants that evolved to drink and process blackwater can help clean it faster. I would not want to cycle it immediately back to onsite drinking water, but in a situation like Jackson, MS, I know I am not contributing sewage to my neighbor’s bathwater.

This video goes through the design principles for onsite greywater and blackwater harvesting: https://youtu.be/f-sRcVkZ9yg

For those unfamilar with the California scene: there is an agricultural water shortage, not a residential one.

You could reduce residential usage of water in California to zero and it would barely make a dent in the water shortage. California can relatively easily desalinate its way out of residential water shortage.

On the other hand, shutting down the agribusinesses in the Central Valley completely fixes California's water shortage for everybody.

It sounds easy to say “shut down agribusiness,” but then you have a food problem.

I don’t know to what extent, but I can’t take “cut off ag” solutions seriously unless they can articulate the impact of the cut-off on food supplies and present alternatives for more efficient crops.

Cutting off alfalfa being exported won't hurt "food supplies" in the US one bit. Almonds, similarly, are hardly necessary for maintaining our "food supply". There are other, more staple, crops that use a lot less water but the agribusinesses choose not to grow them because they don't make as much profit.

One of the perennial problems in California is that the agribusinesses don't pay anywhere close to what they should for water. This creates gigantic misincentives to suck up the water and leave somebody else holding the bag. If the water rates were higher, the agribusinesses would grow a very different mix of crops. Of course, since the agribusinesses also throw around lots of money, politicians won't touch the issue.

The coastal cities finally decided that they need to build enough desalinization plants to cover their needs so they can simply ignore the ongoing Central Valley fiasco.

You can get that in some places in North Carolina too, but it costs thousands to get the non sewered line installed, so most homeowners don’t do it

> Being able to waste land and water resources like that is a typical signal of wealth.

The people with lawns that I know and grew up knowing didn't take care of them to "signal wealth". Many would never care to own a luxury car or Rolex. Rather, they enjoyed gardening, the aesthetics, and having their kids play in the lawn. They barbequed every weekend and enjoyed time outdoors at home.

> Those lawns are usually grown in a way where soil microbes are killed off, water retention capability are reduced (so it needs more water)

This land will never be used for farming again. It's residential and will remain so for centuries or longer.

Many of these perceptions are from assumption or projection. Not actually living these lives or being familiar enough with the people making these decisions.

My wife tells me the same things about wanting a lawn for the kids to play with. It’s only recently that she has opened up to alternatives — from having native grasses and ground cover, to shaping the terrain.

I live in suburban US in a major metropolitan area, and I grew up here. When I talk to people around me maintaining lawns, they don’t think they are signaling wealth either. But some look at me like I am crazy for developing a front yard with native plants. I am not assuming nor am I projecting.

That signal for wealth is largely unconscious. Used to be, those lawns were maintained by sheep. It was a sign of wealth when you can have a lawn that was not pasture. Then people got their own patch of lawns, didn’t have sheep.

If you were to propose to people to get rid of their lawn, there is usually an unconscious resistance coming from wanting that aesthetic. But rarely are those aesthetics and why it is pleasing ever examined. Instead, there are nebulous notions about property value, or about how a trim, neat lawn reflects the work ethics, or caring about one’s property. It’s stuff that has been conditioned.

Furthermore, I was responding to someone from Nigeria. From the perspective of someone whose community have to dig for their own water or sewage, running water is a huge deal. I recall a Netflix documentary of one Indian woman’s fight with the local government to get flushing toilets for a school.

Those people who are not consciously signaling wealth are instead taking the wealth for granted, not even knowing the history of lawns. The point still stands: 70% of residential water purified to drinking water standards are used to water a lawn. From the perspective of communities where you have to fight tooth and nail to get purified drinking water at all, that’s not so admirable.

We're staring at this dilemma right now. Not for the signaling at all. Our lawn basically died in close to drought-like conditions. We didn't want to waste the water or time, but now what?

What do we replace it with that a) doesn't provide a haven for pests or harmful critters, and b) actually is safe for kiddo and other neighborhood kids, and c) doesn't destroy property values for the neighborhood?

There are some resources I can suggest:

- r/nolawns have great ideas on what is possible. It does not have to be ugly or unkempt - the local city, library, or university may have programs for growing native front yards. These are adapted to the local conditions. There are landscape designers who can work that

As an example, it is possible to grow perennial flowers in such a way that _something_ is blooming for much of the year. (Kinda depends on where you live).

The trick with (c) is to design something that looks like it is maintained. So one pattern some folks do is to put a clear boundary on areas left as meadows, and other areas that look like it is clearly mowed.

You can also get it certified as a wildlife refuge from the World Wildlife Foundation, and get an official looking sign. A sign that educates people about it also reframes how the yard is seen and experienced.

There are other green ground covers than grass that require less water, less chemical treatment, etc. It wasn’t until the 1960s or 70s and a big advertising push from Scott’s Lawn and similar companies that the all-grass, perfectly manicured lawn became a thing in middle-class America. Prior to that, mixed grass+clover+weed lawns were the norm.

The fact that people continue to grow grass lawns in places like Arizona is baffling. There are other choices.

FWIW, I mixed clover into my lawn 5 years ago. I no longer have to water it at all through the summer. Mowing is half as frequent. And it doesn’t brown as much over winter. No idea what anybody would do anything different, except for not knowing any better. I’ll never do an all-grass lawn again.

> No idea what anybody would do anything different, except for not knowing any better

Or because clover handles hot climates poorly and is prone to leaving splotchy dead areas, because turf is better able to handle the abuse of yard sports, .... Nothing against most of what you're saying, I just want to highlight that however complicated we think the world is, it's almost certainly more than expected.

I would be very glad if grass lawns were made unlawful in the US. It is a terrible waste of time, money, and natural resources for something so useless. I don't have any idea why this silly concept became so common in this country.

I get how you would come to believe that if you didn't have one.

Let's ban avocados, too! They're an incredible waste of water and resources. (I can't stand how they taste, so this wouldn't affect me.)

I happen to be forced by the city to maintain a green lawn. That's why I came to believe this.

There’s a authoritarian law you don’t like, so you hope to seize power and pass the opposite authoritarian law.

How about trying for a truce instead?

American politics in a nutshell.

Apply to be a federally protected wildlife habitat. My daughter did that in a city in Indiana. Ripped out her 'lawn' and replanted with native grasses and things to promote butterfly and bee habitats. The city hates that they can't fine her anymore.

https://www.nwf.org/garden-for-wildlife/certify

Well, lawns are the worst culprit in the “urban water use” category, so the true comparison is “let’s ban beef cattle” and that will become an increasingly less crazy-sounding idea in the coming years (especially in the US West)

Avocados use an order of magnitude less water than beef.

I grew up in suburban America, and live within a major metropolitan area. I have had lawns. Over the years with what I have learned, I came to the conclusion that lawns as they are generally developed are a big waste, and there are better ways to achieve what I can get out of a lawn.

And yes, avacados use up a lot of water, as do nuts. Our food system is built on top of shipping food far away to where it is consumed rather than growing locally. And yes, growing locally means giving up some things, being more attuned to seasonality, and growing and consuming alternate varieties and foods with equivalent nutrition.

It sounds absurd to say, get rid of all the avacados, but to me, it is absurd we are cloning avacados and wrecking a lot of ecologies in order to ship them far away to people. And I like avacados and giving them up has an effect on me.

Shipping food from where water is to where it isn't is fine.

Dunno why farmers here sell undried, oh sorry, "fresh" corn for a premium when it saves them drying + storage costs.

Shipped food are bred for monocropping and transport. Tomatoes in grocery stores, for example, are chosen for its uniform shape and ability to be stored and transported. They are not bread for taste or nutritional value. That is also leaving aside having to depend on the global supply chain and cheap transport for food. Which is more costly and fragile than developing local food sources and food sovereignty.

Still depends on the food. Even local tomatoes and other “fresh” crops will be the same mono-cropping garbage unless you hunt down niche stuff at a farmer’s market (or in my case, grow your own!)

Yes, the most local food are the ones that are grown at home. When you add seed-saving, there is an opportunity to breed landraces specific to your environment, taste, and nutritional density.

No transport on refrigerated trucks needed. Onsite compost complements the whole setup. Then you add greywater for the perennial food forest.

Growing avocados where your lawn used to be would be a good change. At least you can eat those, it isn't just a decoration

Not necessarily avocados, however, cultivating a perennial food forest in the yard or on municipal land is a thing.

Even growing ornamental native grasses or meadows instead of fescue help the native ecology.

Almonds too. They are a terrible use of water and can literally kill people.

Which is nuts (no pun intended), because there are nut trees that can grow well in arid and semi-arid conditions.

The thing is, in order to maximize commercial yields for shipping almonds far away, we end up with agricultural practiced that deplete soil and water resources.

Grass lawns are a red herring.

The water shortages are almost all brought about by big agribusiness usage of water in places where we shouldn't be doing big agribusinesses.

>Personally for me, signaling wealth by wasting resources is not a characteristic that is admirable for me.

Hmmm, if only we could have some laws and regulations preventing resource waste and focus on saving the environment. Like an agency focused on ... environmental protection.