Hey Sacramento, you should still kill your lawn

Sprinklers are running. We saw them flowing in Midtown this past weekend, watering lawns of businesses and nightclubs—and flooding sidewalks and alleyways. This is the worst drought California’s ever seen, yet property owners keep flowing those sprinklers to green their lawns.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Stop. It’s time to kill your lawn.

Look, we’re not immune to the charms of a summer lawn. Everyone loves green grass, and we understand that many homeowners have made investments in landscaping that they’d prefer not to waste.

But in these dry times—with a nearly nonexistent snow pack in the Sierra Nevada, depleted reservoirs, area farmers fearing for their livelihoods and Gov. Jerry Brown ordering a statewide, 25 percent cutback in urban water use—it’s hard to justify using water to maintain aesthetics.

We applaud local homeowners who’ve taken the initiative to either stop watering or remove their lawns and put in drought-tolerant landscape. If you can afford it, there are ways to install a drought-resistant garden that can attract pollinators and, of course, conserve water.

But not everyone can pay for those changes now. So, at the very least, we all must take a hard look at the grass on our side of the fence—and let it die.