If your pretty green lawn has gone brown due to drought, what is the best solution? Paint it! At least, this is the trend in Southern California.

Though it didn’t quite spark it, “Leave it to Beaver” heavily popularized America’s aesthetic interest in happy suburban homes with manicured lawns and picket fences. This carried over after World War II, during the rapid suburbanization of the United States. Ethnically homogenous and virtually standardized communities represented the perceived “Americanness” and values of the middle and upper classes. A manicured lawn, privately owned home, a car or two, and a nuclear family epitomized to many the ideal. In the last half century, many of these aesthetic values and symbols have not changed.

Green grass remains not only aesthetically appealing, but economically important. As the housing market rebounds, a pretty lawn is an attractive component in a home’s appearance and ability to sell. Some claim that it can add 15 percent to the home’s value. Consequently, companies have popped up that will help ensure this appearance; however, these are not landscapers or gardeners, but spray painters.

In the latest and laziest effort to display human mastery of nature and promote the aesthetic, spray painting one’s lawn green has been gaining popularity. Promoters say it is more environmentally friendly than conventional landscaping, which requires many gallons of fuel for machines, chemical pesticides, and heavy water use. They claim that it is non toxic and grows out with the grass, similar to temporarily highlighting one’s hair. Furthermore, this practice is already quite common in golf courses, ballparks, and other athletic venues. In those cases, however, the ground is built of turf or fake grass. On a front lawn, it is real grass and real dirt with things living in it. Regardless of the truth or falsehood of the non toxicity of the spray, would applying a sheet of paint to the soil clog its pores and reduce insects’ and small animals’ mobility and access to air and food? Furthermore, could covering living blades of grass in a layer of paint block its access to the sun and ability to photosynthesize?

An overlook of a Southern California town, courtesy of Frank Halprin.

A CBS San Francisco article interviewed a lawn painter who said that “…the grass doesn’t die completely, and when the winter rains come, the lawn will turn green again on their own.” Does this mean that the grass dies partly? Or that parts of the lawn die completely while others do not? This would seem to throw a monkey wrench into the apparent eco-friendliness of the product. A New York Times article explains that many spray companies claim that the paint includes some fertilizer “…which can help cut down on weekly watering while keeping the grass from dying completely.” Again, the explanations are vague: is the paint intended to contribute to saving the drought-stricken grass, or does it damage it and so they add some fertilizer so it is not completely deadly? Brown grass is not already dead, it is dehydrated. In fact, grass is among the most resilient of plants on the planet. Even wildfires pose no serious threat to it, as the seeds are deep enough in the soil that only the top layer will burn off; it will grow back in time.

The author of the Times article also relates that owners’ dogs come inside with green stains on their paws, and that the grass itself feels crunchy once painted. Especially considering the paint has plant fertilizer in it, is it healthful for dogs to be playing in it and licking it off themselves? The crunchiness further ties into the concerns with regard to covering blades of grass with paint. The comparison to hair dye does not hold water; hair is composed of dead cells. Applying hair spray and making it crunchy is not problematic. Grass is alive and requires the below- and above-ground components to be healthful.

White fences, green lawns, and pets, courtesy of Jesse Millan via Flickr.

The blame for this series of issues should not be dropped squarely on the shoulders of homeowners. They are finding themselves caught between a rock and a hard place, facing fines for excessive water use during the course of the drought, but at the same time being threatened with fines for brown and insufficiently tended lawns! The obsession with green lawns, dating back over a century, resides not solely within the minds of American people but is a factor in American law and policy formation. The local governments and economies clearly value it as well, and so residents are pressured to maintain that appearance.

Ultimately, people are masking the realities of the drought with artificial nature. After a century of using green lawns as a means of attempting to conquer nature, now you’re spray painting your lawn green in a continuous effort to convince ourselves that we are capable of so doing. Rather, it is a clear example of quite the opposite. Instead of turning a blind eye or applying a thin veil, we should take this opportunity to address the current situation and its causes. Be okay with the lawn being brown for a little while. There are more important things to consider.

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Franklin R. Halprin (@FHalprin) holds an MA in History & Environmental Politics from Rutgers University where he studied human-environmental relationships and settlement patterns in the nineteenth century Southwest. His research focuses on the influences of social and cultural factors on the development of environmental policy. Contact Frank at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Chris Ford via Flickr]

Franklin R. Halprin

Franklin R. Halprin holds an MA in History & Environmental Politics from Rutgers University where he studied human-environmental relationships and settlement patterns in the nineteenth century Southwest. His research focuses on the influences of social and cultural factors on the development of environmental policy. Contact Frank at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Think Twice Before Spray Painting Your Lawn Green, California appeared first on Law Street.

We tend to envision our oceans as blue and our lands as green; the residents of Toledo, Ohio, however, had a bit difference experience recently when they were faced with green water.

When municipal officials declared they found toxins in the city’s drinking water supply, residents refrained from using it entirely. Naturally they did not drink or cook with it, but the contamination was deemed so severe that even boiling the water beforehand would not be sufficient. Emma G Fitzsimmons of The New York Times relates that children and people with weak immune systems were urged not to bathe in such water either. As local bottled supplies ran dry, the National Guard arrived to disperse fresh water.

Eventually, investigators determined that a large Lake Erie algae bloom, the source of water for the city of Toledo and 11 million residents in the lake’s vicinity, was the source of the contamination. Algae refers to a very broad spectrum of aquatic organisms ranging from the microscopic and single celled to the giant kelp of the Eastern Pacific. A bloom results in the production of a large amount of peptides, compounds consisting of multiple linked amino acids, in this case called microcystin. This particular peptide is toxic to humans, inducing vomiting, diarrhea, and liver damage, Fitzsimmons relates.

A 2012 algal bloom in Lake , courtesy of Olga Nohra via Flickr

Algal blooms resulting from human activity are often caused by massive introduction of phosphorous into an aquatic system. Lake Erie has been plagued by blooms in the past, particularly in the 1960s and 1980s. These occasions tended to be the result of poor septic infrastructure and consequent excessive discharge of waste into the lake. Since then, those threats have been somewhat ameliorated; however, agricultural runoff continues to provide undesired phosphorous discharge into water bodies such as Erie.

It is difficult to impose barriers on the leakage of phosphorous into Lake Erie. Journalist Michael Wines clarified that,

“The federal Clean Water Act is intended to limit pollution from fixed points like industrial outfalls and sewer pipes, but most of the troublesome phosphorous carried into waterways like Lake Erie is spread over thousands of square miles.”

This process is called “non-point pollution.” There have been some initiatives to try and reduce the pollution output in the first place, by providing farmers with methods of reducing fertilizer use, for example. But enacting laws that set limits on pollution is a daunting task. They must go hand in hand with voluntary efforts by those involved with the sources of pollution, to more accurately calculate how much fertilizer and materials are necessary, rather than carelessly applying an estimated amount.

An issue that must be addressed throughout the course of the dialogue on this event is the fact that algal blooms choke off other aquatic life. They absorb a massive amount of oxygen from the water, and other biodiversity are hard pressed to survive. This should be sufficient motivation in and of itself to mitigate the causes of blooms. Furthermore, substantial damage to the ecosystems of a place like Lake Erie causes fish catches to plummet, causing threats to our food supplies and commercial endeavors. The health of the lake’s biodiversity is also tied into lay fishing and other forms of recreation, which in turn brings to mind the importance of tourism and the state of the regional economy.

Simultaneously, another city farther east is also concerned with the state of its drinking water. New York City is famous for its pure and high quality drinking water. This is in large due to the vigorous efforts of organizations such as Riverkeeper, that maintain a presence in the Hudson River estuary in attempt to protect it from polluters, dumpers, and violators of other environmental and water protection laws. The source of water for more than nine million urban residents has come under threat recently from a rise in oil shipment by rail right along river’s edge in the so labeled “bomb trains,” or cars that are prone to spillage and explosion. On top of this, one of the primary aqueducts in the water infrastructure is leaking, journalists Aaron Ernst & Christof Putzel reveal. If it bursts, over half the city could be left without drinking water. In the meantime, plans are for it to be diverted through a bypass tunnel while repairs take place, which could take several years.

One of New York City’s reservoirs in the Catskills, courtesy of Franklin R. Halprin

This case is the inverse of from Toledo; the problem is not the quality of the water, but the ability to deliver it. However, in the New York area there are many dangers to the quality of the water, and similarly the mediums by which Toledo’s water arrives in the city are an important factor when addressing phosphorous discharge and the quality of water resources. The cities face multiple and similar challenges: urban drinking water, water infrastructure, and reservoir protection. These concerns will only grow as cities expand and pressure on natural resources requires new approaches. If only two to three percent of the Earth’s water is freshwater, and the United States agricultural industry accounts for more than 75% of the nation’s water consumption, then civilian residents and policy makers face many challenges in ensuring that enough water remains drinkable and accessible to the people.

It is evident, then, that we humans are deeply entrenched in our environments. An ecosystem is very delicate, complex, and interconnected; a series of events in a remote corner may multiply and have unforeseen consequences elsewhere. It is vital for us to be more responsible in how we treat our water. We need it, the rest of the environment needs it, and we need the environment.

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Franklin R. Halprin (@FHalprin) holds an MA in History & Environmental Politics from Rutgers University where he studied human-environmental relationships and settlement patterns in the nineteenth century Southwest. His research focuses on the influences of social and cultural factors on the development of environmental policy. Contact Franklin at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory via Flickr]

Franklin R. Halprin

Franklin R. Halprin holds an MA in History & Environmental Politics from Rutgers University where he studied human-environmental relationships and settlement patterns in the nineteenth century Southwest. His research focuses on the influences of social and cultural factors on the development of environmental policy. Contact Frank at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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