Xeriscaping Program Benefits El Paso

From fast food restaurants, to banks, to your front door? xeriscaping is everywhere.

It’s all part of a program started back in 2001 that encouraged home and business owners to cut down on water consumption by decreasing the size of their water-thirsty grass lawns.

“For the residential sector, about 33 percent of your water bill, or the water you use at home, goes towards irrigating landscapes” said Anai Padilla, Water Conservation TecH20 Center Manger.

Since 2001, El Paso Water Utilities said the city has decreased its water usage per person per day by 16 percent. To some that might seem like a drop in the bucket, but over time it really adds up, especially on a citywide scale.

“The overall savings out of that program was 418 million gallons of water a year” Padilla said.

Although the city isn’t offering any more rebates to convert to xeriscaping, the savings on your water bill alone can be incentive enough to make the change.

If it takes about an inch of water per square foot per week to keep your grass healthy. That means over the course of a month it would take 2.5 gallons of water per square foot just to keep the grass healthy.

According to El Paso Water Utilities, the city has removed more than 11 million square feet of lawn since the program began.

That’s a little more than 194 football fields worth of grass.