The reclamation of Reclamation
The reclamation of Reclamation
The Bureau of Reclamation ditches its Boulder City turf.
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It felt like great symbolism that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Lower Colorado River Region headquarters was constructed with so much decorative grass in mind. What better way to communicate the foundational ethos of a federal agency premised on reclaiming water from desert “waste” and re-allocating it to irrigation of all types, including ornamental lawns and medians in cities from Los Angeles to Denver.
It’s also great symbolism that the agency has now ditched its office lawn.
The bureau’s lower Colorado River headquarters sits in Boulder City, a few miles away from Lake Mead. The town bills itself an oasis in the desert and it feels that way when you visit. Boulder City was a Reclamation town, with the original title to its land held by the federal agency. Planned around the construction of the Hoover Dam in 1931, it was designed to provide housing for the dam’s workforce and offices for Reclamation.
Looking at old photos, lawns are major features. Today the grass stands out, especially set against the backdrop of Lake Mead, where a bathtub ring marks the overall decline of the nation’s largest reservoir. Less than a century since the creation of the town, the nation’s 20th-Century Reclamation planning — especially on the Colorado River — is facing incredible strain. Climate change is stressing the system, no doubt. But it is not only climate change. That the system would face stress into the 21st Century appeared to be inevitable as early as the 1960s. There are simply more legal entitlements to use water than there is water to go around for the 40 million people who rely on the river, a watershed that includes seven states, 30 sovereign tribes and the country of Mexico.
Overuse, amplified by climate change and more arid conditions, led Reclamation to declare a shortage in 2021, followed by an unprecedented call to dramatically reduce water use in 2022. Infrastructure in the historical Reclamation mold (big diversions or new augmentation projects) would not come online fast enough to fix the issue in the short-term, setting aside the many debates about which of these projects are feasible.
The only viable short-term option: Adapt and cut back across the basin.
In cities, the number one target was decorative grass.
Most of Southern Nevada had been conserving for decades, incentivizing the removal of turf and adopting aggressive conservation ordinances (you can read more about this in my Smithsonian Magazine piece from April). It’s one reason the grass at the bureau’s office and in Boulder City stuck out. In 2021, Las Vegas redoubled its efforts, getting the Legislature to requiring the removal of water-guzzling grass when it serves only a decorative purpose. Since then, other Western cities have taken a similar approach.
This included the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s lawns in Boulder City.
The law generally gave everyone in Southern Nevada until the end of 2026 to remove decorative or “non-functional” turf from their premises. In classic federal government style, the Reclamation agency released a long 400+ page environmental assessment outlining their plans to comply (shoutout to KLAS for posting the document online).
“The purpose of the Proposed Action is to correct unsatisfactory environmental conditions created by the inefficient use of water used to irrigate non-functional turf, trees, and other vegetation at both the Admin Building and Training Center.”
According to the report, about 4 million gallons of water were used to maintain the landscapes at the two building. Redesigning them as desert-friendly xeriscape could result in water savings of more than half, or about 66%. The bureau started this work, at a cost of more than $4 million, and it recently opened up the project to the public.
Not everyone is pleased with the results.
It’s received mixed reviews, and photos in the Boulder City Review and the Nevada Independent show, more or less, a pile of rocks where grass once was. In a statement, the agency told Nevada Independent columnist John L. Smith (you should check out his piece on this), that the reclaimed Reclamation landscape is “approximately 85% coverage of young native desert plants” — with an emphasis on the young. The hope is the xeriscape desert landscaping will grow into the rendering with drip irrigation.
I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Drive around Southern Nevada, and its true that there is a variety of turf conversions, ranging from a bald rock pile to the beautiful, mimicking the natural landscape and including things like desert tolerant trees for shade. But that they are happening at all is something of a miracle. Yes, you could look at these turf conversions and say that’s relatively not much water. It’s just a patch of lawn, or in the case of larger projects like Reclamation’s, a few acres of decorative vegetation. It makes only a dent compared to the total water dedicated to agriculture, which uses most of the Colorado River. Not to mention that turf removal is not the panacea. There are major issues about mitigating impacts of urban heat and if the saved water is conserved (or re-dedicated to growth).
Yet individual water conservation projects — whether they are in cities or irrigation districts — do add up, and projects adding up is a main tool of Reclamation right now.
With more rights to use water than there is water to go around, finding ways to save is part of Reclamation’s job. Where planting lawns was once the end goal of reclamation projects, rethinking lawns is what reclamation looks like now for many in the West.
It’s not as exciting as building Hoover Dam, but these projects can help to reduce the risks for everyone on a river manipulated by years of reclamation and overuse. In 2024, Reclamation is grappling with its own legacy, and ripping out grass is part of doing so.
Barring mandatory cuts on the river (a politically/legally risky proposition), adaptation looks like a lot of distributed conservation projects. The mechanics of actually doing that happens on the local level, and Reclamation is no exception to the local rules.
The agency’s hand was perhaps pushed by the Nevada Legislature. That still doesn’t take away from the symbolic weight of ditching an office lawn only a few miles away from a severely-diminished Lake Mead in a watershed where everyone is facing hard questions about using less in the shadow of collective overuse and climate change.
Or put another way, maybe the landscape is catching up to the reality around it.