The Grass is Always Wetter

by Tony Chavira

Next American City has a perfectly-titled article today that breaks down the impending water apocalypse California's going to have to face in the coming years.  In particular, that we're going to have to make some serious sacrifices soon:

California Homeowners Associations are about to get a quick dose of reality from Sacramento, of all places, 90% of its water from Northern California and the Colorado River—are resisting individual homeowner requests to replace their lawns with artificial turf, or low-water-use plants.

Water managers from the area went to Sacramento with their case, and Assemblywoman Lori Saldana, D-San Diego, introduced Assembly Bill 1793 in an attempt to fix the situation. According to the U-T, the bill “would require homeowners associations to allow installation of artificial turf. But in a nod to concerns about quality, the legislation permits those associations to establish design and quality standards for fake grass.” God forbid the astroturf not look nice.

Okay, so we start saving water... something we're pretty much all used to at this point, so it shouldn't really be too difficult.  And fine, we're using astroturf... we know that it's made of recycle shoes or something so that's a plus, and we won't be wasting so much cash on water we dump into our lawns. San Diego doesn't seem to mind taking the hit and making soe lawns slightly tacky for the environment.  Heck, it's also a huge surge of cash to astroturfing companies... which smells like an investment opportunity to me.

But then I read an article in the Architect's Newspaper about new parks the city of L.A. plans to build over some of our freeways:

Plans to develop four so-called freeway cap parks have recently been announced in Los Angeles. The cap concept, which essentially covers a portion of a freeway with a planted concrete lid, has gained popularity in the last decade as an urban “greening” solution. The multibillion-dollar projects are meant to knit together previously disparate neighborhoods, theoretically creating cohesion and larger-scale community gathering places without having to destroy or displace existing infrastructures.

The four projects are spread across Hollywood, downtown LA, and Santa Monica. Hollywood Central Park would be built atop the 101 Freeway on a proposed 44-acre site between Santa Monica Boulevard and Bronson Avenue. Park 101 would be built atop the “Big Trench” over the 101 Freeway downtown. Santa Monica is hoping to cap portions of the 10 Freeway between Ocean Avenue and 4th Street, and between 14th and 17th streets, creating five- and seven-acre parks.

Though super-cool planning concepts, check out how grassy green they're going to be from the renderings:

So to sum up the obvious, San Diego residents are willing to put astroturf in front of their homes, but the city of Los Angeles don't want to build a park that's more water-conscious.  In fact, the word "water" is not mentioned a single time in the Architect's Newspaper article (which probably means that it didn't come up much in the official announcement of these park spaces).

What to do?  What... to... do...?

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