Giving cash for grass

<p>The anti-lawn business is blossoming in Sonoma County.</p><p>Windsor, Cotati, Santa Rosa and Sonoma, which offer to pay residents and business owners to tear out their lawns, report business is booming.</p><p>Paul Piazza, Windsor’s water conservation coordinator, said he’s been overwhelmed this summer by residents willing to tear out their water-guzzling lawns.</p><p>He said the year-old program to pay home and business owners 50 cents a square foot to replace their lush lawns with low water use landscaping has so far uprooted 30,000-square-feet of turf.</p><p>“We’re being overrun with people interested in the program,” he said, citing customers concerned by this year’s water shortage as well as increasingly expensive monthly water bills.</p><p>Windsor caps its payments at a maximum of $350, equal to 700-square-feet of lawn for homeowners, and up to $2,500 for 5,000-square-feet of turf for businesses.</p><p>Just two weeks ago, Cotati began a similar but more generous program that offers $1 for each square foot of lawn replaced with less water-needy landscaping.</p><p>“There have been 10-15 inquiries so far,” said Cotati engineering technician Shiko Njuno.</p><p>The city already has performed three inspections for residents attempting to qualify for the turf replacement program, ranging from a request to tear up 90-square-feet of lawn to a homeowner association seeking to remove 23,000-square-feet of turf area.</p><p>While Cotati will pay up to $1 a square foot toward the cost to replace torn-out turf with low-water using landscaping, City Engineer Damien O’Bid said.</p><p>“We review all the landscaping plans for reasonability (of costs) so people aren’t taking advantage of the program,” he said.</p><p>Santa Rosa water conservation program coordinator Dan Muelrath said his city’s cash-for-turf program, begun in July 2007, has paid out $225,000 to replace 775,000-square-feet, or almost 18 acres of lawn.</p><p>“We had 200 requests the first year, 700 last year and we expect to hit 1,200 this year,” Muelrath said.</p><p>Santa Rosa pays 50 cents a square foot under its replacement program, but caps it at a maximum of $250 for 500 square feet of lawn for residences and $5,000 for 10,000-square-feet of commercially maintained turf.</p><p>All of the cash-for-grass programs in the four cities require residents to replace their lawns with foliage watered by drip irrigation.</p><p>Muelrath said that results in substantial water savings since a square foot of lawn consumes 25 gallons or more per year compared to around eight gallons for more drought-tolerant plants.</p><p>He said the conversion is being driven by more than money. </CW>“There is a shift in how people are viewing their lawns. It used to be lawns were a prestige thing. But there also is a changing perception that drought-tolerant and low water-use plants don’t have to be brown, that they can be beautiful and colorful,” he said.</p><p>Sonoma, which has the oldest cash-for-grass program, has seen more than 57,000 square feet of lawns disappear since the program began in mid-2006.</p><p>Carrie Pollard, a water conservation specialist with the Sonoma County Water Agency which administered the program before turning it over to the city in May, said the program is becoming increasingly popular.</p><p>“People are becoming more aware of the program and the benefits it offers, not only from the cash-for-grass, but by seeing their water bills drop once they remove their lawns,” she said.</p><p><CW-24>In all four cities, the money used to pay those willing to remove their turf areas comes from water connection fees paid by new development or from the monthly water bills paid by the city’s water customers.</p><p>-- You can reach Staff Writer Mike McCoy at 521-5276 or mike.mccoy@pressdemocrat.com.</p>