A gardener who wouldn’t give his name waters the front lawn of a home on Alta Drive in Beverly Hills last month.Mel Melcon
"Swimmin' pools. Movie stars."
Like the theme song from the 1960s sit-com The Beverly Hillbillies, nothing says Beverly Hills quite like a starlet lounging by an azure-coloured pool. But with California in the grips of a three-year drought and its reservoirs going dry, that image is getting a serious makeover.
This Los Angeles enclave of the uber-rich and famous is a key target of the state's first-ever mandatory water restrictions. Last month, Governor Jerry Brown ordered communities to cut water use by 25 per cent by early next year. In a cluster of designated high-consumption areas, Beverly Hills among them, the reduction has been set at 36 per cent, a harsh measure aimed at reining in the state's biggest water hogs.
The city of Beverly Hills, 16 kilometres west of downtown Los Angeles, has since invoked its highest state of water emergency, a move that includes shutting off all fountains that don't use recycled water, a ban on filling new swimming pools and a prohibition on restaurants giving patrons a glass of water (unless they ask). City council also approved fines of up to $1,000 (U.S.) and hefty water surcharges for abusers, while giving itself new powers to shut off the tap if residents balk.
"We are in a crisis situation," Mayor Julian Gold declared as he announced the water-saving measures.
Tough water-use restrictions and changing attitudes, here and elsewhere in the state, are starting to reshape the landscape of densely populated Southern California, where lush lawns, pools, irrigation systems and fountains are part of the urban landscape. It's an acquired culture: Beginning in the early 1900s, a growing L.A. diverted water from further east, setting off "water wars" with farmers and ranchers – the background of the 1974 film Chinatown.
Now, homeowners are ripping out lawns and flower beds, replacing them with rocks, drought-tolerant plant species or man-made grass, and recycling their rain and fountain water.
"There is a Southwest look that's beginning to take hold here, and it's trending," said landscape architect Rob Pressman of TGP Inc. in Burbank. "L.A. could start to look like parts of Arizona." People are much more aware of the problem, he said. "The scare is there."
The water conservation options are seemingly limitless. Other Californians are resorting to less expensive, temporary measures, such as spraying dead grass with vegetable-based green dye that gives lawns a lush appearance for a few months.
"Even though every house has a lawn, California is a desert – all the hills and all the valleys," explained Jim Power, a 45-year-old former mortgage broker turned lawn-dyeing entrepreneur.
Mr. Power abandoned the mortgage business in the middle of the housing crash earlier this century, eventually starting up LawnLift of San Marco, which makes lawn spray for homeowners and landscapers. Driven by the drought and new water restrictions, Mr. Power's business has taken off, with sales more than doubling this year.
"What are you going to do if you have a lawn and you don't have $10,000 to put in AstroTurf or new drought-tolerant plants?" he asked. "Are you going to live with a haystack in your front lawn?"
But government officials are fighting a century-old mentality that has helped transform Southern California.
"One of the problems is that in the really high-consumption places everyone wants to have a lawn and a pool," said economist Kevin Klowden, managing director of the California Center at the Milken Institute, a Santa Monica-based think tank. "We have to change the cultural expectations. And then you have to say to people: 'If you want a big lawn and a pool, then you pay the price for it.'"
In Beverly Hills, the job of telling residents what they can and can't do with water is the job of Trish Rhay, the city's top water cop and assistant director of public works.
"It's changing a whole mindset," Ms. Rhay explained. "Beverly Hills is a garden city, and a beautiful city. My job is to convince people they can be water-conscious and still have a beautiful landscape."
And forget the lawn spray here: It's not allowed. And AstroTurf is only okay for backyards, not out front where people might see it.
The city's 42,000 residents currently consume 10 million gallons of water a day. That's an average of 235 gallons per person per day in the summer months, one of the highest per capita rates in the state. The city must cut consumption to 150 gallons a day by next February.
"We're going to start with a warning, and then it's going to go up – $100, $200, $500, up to $1,000 for every violation," Ms. Rhay said. "Every person has a driver – for some people it's the cost, for others it's doing the right thing."
As much as 70 per cent of Beverly Hills water consumption goes into landscapes – pools, lawns and the like. "We have between one and two years left in our state reservoirs. That's our buffer," she pointed out. "Do we really want to be using that buffer to fill swimming pools? No, that's not a good use of water."
The city has already let the grass turn yellow along the median of one its main downtown boulevards. It plans to turn the strip into a demonstration site to show what drought-tolerant vegetation can look like. "It can be just as beautiful," Ms. Rhay insisted.
Others aren't convinced Beverly Hills residents are ready to give up their oasis just yet. Michele Hoolihan, president of Fantasy Fountains of Newport Beach, recently completed a project at a home in Beverly Hills that included a series of elaborate fountains and a rotating sculpture with water flowing over one side. In projects elsewhere, clients are content to reuse grey water, build smaller reservoirs and install low-flow fountain jets to save water – but not here, she said.
"It's a different world in Beverly Hills," Ms. Hoolihan said. "They want different – something no one else has."