Christmas time in Las Vega sis filled with family and fun, and most of us are spending the holiday thinking about ways we can make our loved one’s lives better. Because we live in a desert and so many of us waste precious water on a daily basis, one of the ways we could make our loved one’s lives better is to conserve more than we currently do. As part of our community effort to alleviate the crisis drought that has happened over the last few years, we need to make choices that impact the community as a whole. We need to act as each other’s keepers and do the things that will help our community to grow stronger and survive. One of these things is not wasting water that we do not have excesses of. Lake Mead is at record lows, and if it goes much lower we risk not having enough water on hand to supply everyone with enough to drink. We must realize that in a community that consists of millions of people who all depend on the public water supply, every gallon that we waste is a gallon that could be part of the drinking water supply. Each square foot of lawn that we have in our homes wastes 55 gallons of water a year just to keep it alive and green, and every one of those gallons could be used to prevent a catastrophe in our Las Vegas community.
So what can you do this holiday season to conserve water and to help out our neighbors? The best thing that you can possibly do is to take some of the money that you would have spent on gifts and use it to put artificial turf into the areas where you currently have grass. This will save hundreds if not thousands of gallons of water every year, and will save your household the money that it would have cost to water your lawn. In addition, you will improve your property values by having a ground covering that looks great all year long, and never needs a drop of water to look that way. It is made with extruded plastic that is shaped like blades of grass and looks and feels just like the real thing. This means you will also save the effort it takes you every year to keep it all alive in the summer heat that is only a few months away. The best gift that you can give to yourself and your neighbors, as well as the community as a whole is to rethink that decision to put in grass, and instead replace it with artificial turf. If you decide to do that, the the SNWA will give you a gift as well, in the form of a rebate of up to 3 dollars for every square foot you replace. At the holidays we are always looking for meaningful gifts, well how about one that keeps on giving every year? The gift of a more water conscious community!