Southern California residents are beginning to accept that lush lawns are unsustainable when reservoirs and rivers run low in a drought era. Erin Brockovich’s artificial turf next to her neighbor’s real grass.Credit...Mark Abramson for The New York Times AGOURA HILLS, Calif. - Erin Brockovich made her name decades ago as an environmental activist who exposed corporate wrongdoing that polluted drinking water. So she felt a bit defensive when a television reporter asked how her name landed on a list of water guzzlers during a dire California drought. At one point last year, she received a $1,700 bill for two months of water and fines. Ms. Brockovich ultimately decided she had to get rid of her lawn, a central part of the backyard oasis she had built over more than two decades living in Agoura Hills, a suburb of large homes with immaculate yards about 40 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. She replaced 3,100 square feet of grass with high-tech artificial turf. “This is not a fire drill, and every one of us has to participate,” she said. “We have to get past the blame and sadness of it.” For the better part of a century, the lawn has been one of Southern California’s most durable middle-class fantasies: a single-family house with a manicured emerald yard that always remains lush - even in the dead of summer when much of the region’s native vegetation is golden brown. But as climate change exposes the limits of the water supply, homeowners and water officials say the end of the thirsty lawn may finally be here. Where residents once looked askance at any yard that resembled a desert diorama, there are now parades of gravel beds studded with cacti, native plant gardens and artificial turf. The change reflects a different kind of neighborly peer pressure, supercharged by stringent new water restrictions that took effect in June. Over most of the past year, 300 applicants a month sought rebates that paid... |