I was quite cheered by the article in the Wall Street Journal recently (September 17th) - "Turf Battle Heats Up Over Limits on Water-Guzzling Landscapes" by Gwendolyn Bounds. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203278404574416990861394378.html

) It looks like the Environmental Protection Agency is moving to take its WaterSense conservation program to the national level, introducing a voluntary certification for the yards of newly-built homes if they are water-conserving. Essentially this will encourage less lawn and more water-sensitive landscaping.

I quote -

The rationale: Homeowners waste a lot of water laboring to keep lawns lush.

Locally, some cities and water utilities, in Florida, Nevada and Texas, for example, already offer homeowners and builders financial incentives for taking steps to decrease water usage, including reducing the amount of lawn in residential yards. But the EPA's latest bid to go green would take the movement national, and that has the turfgrass industry up in arms

Apparently, the industry that makes a gazillion dollars selling us All Things Lawn feels threatened. Forget about the wave of toxic chemicals saturating our groundwater. And the monoculture prairie that could so easily be replaced...or reduced....by some native plants, butterfly-attracting flowers, and so on.

I immediately piled onto the WSJ message board and wrote

We need to actively encourage alternate plantings. Most of our climate does not lend itself to a lush green lawn - maintaining these lawns consumes an obscene amount of clean water. Even ignoring all those in the world who are literally dying because they cannot get anything but parasite-laden, polluted water......we cannot keep on using water for these purposes! - so plant something even more beautiful that has less of an impact (and of course I am also disregarding the large amounts of pesticides put on lawns...and the fumes from lawnmowing....) See http://www.lesslawn.com/ for more bumf....

Alas, my plea for solidarity got a pithy response from one reader...

 "Don't be silly - not watering your lawn won't help those who don't have access to clean drinking water. Get real. Are you going to build a pipe to Africa or something?'

To which I replied

I am real, I think, in wanting to empathize with those who have no clean water - that is why I revolt against conspicuous waste of water even though I live in waterlogged Pennsylvania...

Of course, when you live, as I do, on a small development where everyone has an enormous lawn, you are forced to keep the lawn tidy and more-or-less dandelion free. Alas, we inherited the British enthusiasm for a green lawn independent of the new climate we immigrants moved to. It is hard to kick the habit! And I confess that my "Less Lawn" initiatives are...erm...embryonic. But this WaterSense is a very, very cool way to get Americans to use less water.