That’s great info, thanks!
Time to xeriscape all those golf courses!
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I would like to go xeriscape at our new place, but man, I just don’t like the looks of 99 percent of those I’ve seen. Just ugly and disheveled to my eyes – even the ones that most find nice. I might go partial.
You have my vote.
The problem is too many people think xeriscape means “no maintenance.” So their yards become just an unruly collection of cacti and desert wildflowers.
At best a collection of cacti and wildflowers. Most that think it’s “no maintenance” have it turn into weeds growing up thru the rocks. I’ve had people stop by and ask how I keep the weeds out of my xeriscape and I have to tell them “I pull them”.
I think that a dry streambed, with plants strategically placed and watered by a drip system and maybe a nice tree makes for a nice looking xeriscape. A few bigger rocks to break up the gravel helps as well.
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A splash of grass looks nice. A lot of folks in the St George area do that. It breaks up the rock and gravel look.
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So just like now, but without the big dead lawn? 
Guys, guys, guys… the acceptable term is “local-scape”. (Seriously.)
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This is why I haven’t altered my lawn watering one bit. Agriculture wastes massive amounts of water to grow thirsty crops like alfalfa in a desert and then a huge portion of it gets exported to China. When the situation is serious enough that the farmers and golf courses are forced to cut back then I will. Public consumption is a literal drop in the bucket.
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In Bend I belong to the Central Oregon Geoscience Society. We had a zoom talk six weeks ago from a hydrologist who was an expert in the arid high desert of eastern Oregon. Over the last few years, a large shift in agriculture has been underway; moving from alfalfa (in cattle raising region with more horses per capita than most places) to industrial hemp. One question posed was the impact of that change on water usage. He said that alfalfa was the single most water intensive crop grown in Oregon, and industrial hemp was one of the least. To grow cattle, requires a significant draw on resources, particularly water and land.
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Alfalfa takes a lot of water. It’s also the #1 crop in Central Utah, on which many rely for their livelihood. (Not to mention many animals and who rely on it for food.) To move away from that will take a long time. Better reservoir systems would help.
So we should start right away. There’s not going to be more water, but there will be more people.
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Yep. It’s going to take a lot of work, cooperation, compromise, and all that fun stuff. Everyone will have to give up something. And I mean everyone.
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I’m no agricultural expert but I would think that switching crops would take less time than building new reservoirs. Not to mention the tax and environmental impacts.
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That’s beautiful. You and Justaute have done a really nice job.
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I’m not either. It just strikes me that this will be a example of the type of disruption in the economy that will be required. The government will need to invest a lot of money, probably short – term at least, to help the farmers transition to a new livelihood or maybe a new crop that people actually need (how much water does kale or arugula take?). Also, the alfalfa has to come from somewhere, unless we’re going to give up having certain kinds of livestock in our economy. It’s pretty complex. The farmers I know in Central Utah have been growing alfalfa for four generations now.
This is just one example. The population centers in Utah, Nevada, Arizona, most of Wyoming, and New Mexico are basically reclaimed desert. So is most of Southern California. We’re not going to be able to flip a switch to make everything better. I know no one here is suggesting that we can, it’s just a mind-boggling problem.
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I read somewhere, wish I could recall where so that I could link, that some Persian Gulf nations are using reverse osmosis to filter sea water for consumption. While that’s not terribly useful in the high desert of the West, it may be a decent idea for the Coasts. I haven’t got a clue on cost, just remembering that it’s being done in the Persian Gulf.
I’ve read a few articles about that, and there seem to be pretty significant advancements being made.
The biggest challenge seems to be a) it’s still crazy expensive and b) the process produces a ton of waste.
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