Like many communities in the American Southwest, Las Vegas is facing a prolonged drought that is forcing policy leaders to make tough decisions about how best to mitigate the declining water supply.
In 2021, state lawmakers passed a measure that ostensibly banned all irrigation of so-called “non-functional turf.” The law officially goes into effect next January, but the Southern Nevada Water Authority has already begun working to replace that grass with more drought-tolerant landscaping, mostly through rebates for customers who choose to re-landscape.
A lawsuit is now challenging the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s grass removal program in federal court. The suit claims that the program's enforcement is overzealous and is potentially causing environmental harm.
"Our concern is that they've used a good cause, water conservation, to basically just do whatever the heck they want, and they've gone around and, without any oversight, have basically terrorized local residents," Las Vegas Attorney Sam Castor, who is leading the lawsuit, told KNPR.
Ultimately, he wants a judge to strike down SNWA's current policy.
"We would like the court to find that AB 356 is unconstitutional as applied by SNWA," Castor said. "We're reserving the right to suggest that AB 356 is also unconstitutional as it was drafted, and those are some of the things that we're gonna have to figure out with the court, and the best path for us to be able to ensure that the abuse that SNWA is engaging in doesn't continue to ... destroy Las Vegas."
For Colby Pellegrino, deputy general manager of resources for the Southern Nevada Water Authority and Las Vegas Valley Water District, the distinction between ornamental grass and functional turf is fairly easy to understand. In a separate interview with KNPR, she gave a familial rule of thumb.
"Would you let your kid play soccer there?" she asked. "If it's a good place for your kid to play soccer, that's functional turf. It doesn't need to be a full-size soccer field, but if they can kick a ball around, it's a flat surface and the ball won't run away from them on a slope. If it's your comfort zone, and you're comfortable with the distance from the traffic, and then they're not going to kick their ball out in front of a car, that's functional turf."
She also pushed back on assertions that the policy is exacerbating Southern Nevada's heat island effect.
"The urban heat island develops because of our streets, our sidewalks, our block walls, what we choose to put on the roof of a building, any surface that stays hot after the sun goes down, that's the urban heat island, and there's no amount of landscaping that can overcome this," she said.
Guests: Colby Pellegrino, deputy general manager of resources, Southern Nevada Water Authority and Las Vegas Valley Water District; Sam Castor, Las Vegas attorney
