El Paso’s city council supports bringing back grass to Ft. Bliss National Cemetery

The El Paso city council unanimously showed its support for a change of landscaping at Fort Bliss National Cemetery.

The item approved during Tuesday’s council meeting is meant to bolster efforts to bring back grass to the cemetery, and support Congressman Beto O’rourke’s effort to achieve that goal. The vote was symbolic.

The grass was taken out and replaced with xeriscaping at least seven years ago. Since then, visitors and veterans have raised concerns about grave damage caused by heavy rains.

Cemetery officials have said the problem existed when grass covered the graves, though it was less visible.

The cemetery received a water conservation award in 2013 from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Cemetery administrators have said it took 62 million gallons of aquifer water each year to maintain the grass. After xeriscaping was installed, water usage dropped by 90-percent.

ABC-7 archives from 2007 reflect the change was expected to save $75,000 in water per year, and it cost $3.7 million to rip the grass out.

In 2013, when protests flared again, then cemetery director Andrew Matthews told ABC-7, “Lush green grass would be nice to have. But where are we? We’re in the middle of the desert… It was never lush green grass.”

Matthews told ABC-7 the cost would be too much for taxpayers to bear.

“The frustrating thing is that people have forgotten this is another time now. The government does not have an open blank check to do these things. You could put grass back in here but in two weeks it’ll be dead and the $20 million irrigation system that goes with it and all the maintenance that goes with it. And where are you going to get the water from? There are a lot of things that have to go into the equation that aren’t being mentioned,” he said.

It is an emotional issue for many veterans who have told ABC-7 they deserve more than xeriscaping.

“All of these people here, all of these dead people, are my brothers and sisters. We’re all brethren. We all raised our hand and swore to defend this country.”.

With the vote, the next steps will include gathering further support and working with the National Cemetery Administration that control the cemetery.

Advocates estimate that it will cost about $8 million to fix the grounds and put in grass currently.

Council members did express concerns that there might not be enough reclaimed water available to support the grass.