Water districts warn reseeding could be costly

Gold is better than green. That’s what water agencies are trying to tell customers to cut back on water use.

Letting your grass go gold or brown might be the only way water districts have to meet the state mandates.

For the month of August no local water district has met the state mandated requirements on cutting back.

Desert Water Agency only cut back 29% compared to this month two years ago, the goal is 36 percent.

Mission Springs Water District reduced 17%, far below the 28% reduction that the state water board had mandated.

Coachella Valley Water District was only down 27%, well short of 36 percent.

Indio Water Authority has yet to report numbers for the month of August.

“First of all, we have desert landscaping so we water the outside just with a bucket from the shower, the extra water that we use when we are heating up the water, we dump that on the plants,” said Lynn Sweet of Yucca Valley.

Some people are doing everything they can to cut back on water use. But still, years into the drought in our desert, some have lush green lawns. We still found water being wasted, sprinklers watering more concrete than grass.

“Since 70% of water use is outdoors we are encouraging people to check their irrigation, replace heavy water use plants with desert and xeriscaping plants, where it makes sense for them, if they want to remove turf we have an incentive program to help cover that cost,” said Craig Ewing board president of Desert Water Agency.

“This year over seeding might not be the best choice and if you are a CVWD customer, it’s going to be expensive because you will hit those drought penalties if you over seed,” said Heather Engel, communication director for the Coachella Valley Water District.

Over seeding and re seeding could end up using so much water it could push water use over the edge and be extremely expensive.

“It could mean that the state is going to come down on us pretty hard, they could issue some restrictions some mandates they could could start fining us up to $10,000 a day we are hoping to have another month to show that our customers are doing everything they can to get to that 36 percent,” said Engel.

Those fines would be passed on to customers.

Keep in mind, the month of August 2 years ago was an especially wet month and that’s the time frame they use to compare water use today. This year it was hot and dry during the month of August.

Are your neighbors doing enough to conserve water? Will you be reseeding your lawn this year? Let us know in the comments below or tell Joe Galli on Facebook or Twitter…