Las Vegas Goes XERISCAPE

We all know that Las Vegas is the least sustainable place on the planet west of Dubai. As a born and bred LA native however, I still have a special place in my heart for Vegas as the only spot north of the border to do certain “unmentionable things” that would probably get you arrested just about anywhere else.

For this reason, and because I still love making my way to this Mecca of debauchery once or twice a year to blow a couple hundred bucks on blackjack and AMAZING food, I always cheer when I hear about some new green project Vegas is working on. Whether through the massive solar initiative they are pushing or the stricter building codes now being enforced for environmental reasons, there are undoubtedly some bright green spots in the tale of Sin City.

The latest one however caught even me by surprise.

Of all the wasteful things Las Vegas is known for, one of the most wasteful is its expanse of lush golf courses. Few landscaping techniques require as much maintenance, and produce as much waste, as golf courses. Acres and acres of fairways and greens require hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a year, in addition to pounds of fertilizer and pesticides.

Enter Xeriscape (yeah, the name is pretty corny), a new way of designing golf courses meant to include as much local landscape in the layout as possible. In Vegas, this means losing some lush and beautiful (but unnecessary) decoration and fairway to rock and sand. It also means getting as much of your water as possible from greywater resources. A quick statistics on how much of a difference this makes:

Palm Valley

185 acres of turf – 34 acres replaced by xeriscape in 2002

Estimated water savings since then: 50 MILLION Gallons per year.

It may not be perfect (if they saved 50 million gallons a year by converting 34 acres, I wonder what the other 151 acres guzzles), but as there are few more perfect ways to spend a sunny day than out on the links with some good friends and good beer, it is definitely a step in the right direction.

Image provided by danperry.com