It looks like Southern California is headed back into a drought emergency as we roll into the hot months of 2022. Personally, I can’t say it’s a surprise as this has catastrophe has been growing on the horizon for months, if not years.

It’s the perfect confluence of too little rain and snow, growing populations and usage demands, and decades of bad ecological water management. You know, business as usual. I’m surprised Elon Musk hasn’t built desalinization plants from the boarder to the SF Bay.

With no benevolent problem solver, collectively it’s up to us, the people that are still living here to find a solution. Or at least elect people who are willing to see the issue and work to find equitable solutions so everyone here has access to clean fresh water.

But is the general public embracing the water crisis as a tangible problem, or is still in the abstract?

Read: Harvesting the Rain

The latest ask from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is “restricting outdoor watering to one day a week.”

The subhead of their press release reading:

Restriction aims to immediately reduce water use in communities with supplies severely limited by state drought

The message here, don’t water your lawns a lot. No, if it’s yellow, let it mellow. No, alarm bells that we’re in a century’s long drought with no long-term solutions other than relying on the chance it might rain, but not so much that it overwhelms our collection and storage facilities or washes off our hard road surfaces into storm drains and into the sea.

We’re reacting, not preparing.

Personally, I don’t think we’re doing enough to look at capturing run off into aquifers or mending poor compacted soils and rampant invasive natives that have made the landscapes hydrophobic and repel the little water that does fall from the sky.

We’re not changing with the change. The people who see and understand what’s going on aren’t at the table to work on the solutions.

My take to the whole thing? Why have a green lawn in the first place? Why grow a crop of a plant whose only productive existence is to occasionally walk barefoot or give the dog something to pee on. Green lawns are a crazy throwback to some golden era of picket fences, smaller populations, and wetter years.

It’s time to take out your lawn and replace it with native plants. Drought tolerant plants work, too, but if you’re going to the trouble to removing your lawn in the first place, why not make it a happy and sustain place for the native species around us, too?

The benefits of replacing your lawn are huge. Save water. Save money. Help fight climate change and reestablish valuable (vital) lost ecosystems as part of a suburban forest. The highest hurdle to removing a grass lawn is getting over the fact that when you look outside you don’t see an emerald carpet of thirsty sod. But many water companies or municipalities like the LADWP or San Diego County DPW offer incentives to removing lawns.

It’s something I’ve done. I realized a long time ago that trying to grow a lush green lawn in the middle of a drought was a losing game. So, who wait until the drought catastrophe gets worse? Get ready for it now.