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One Colorado city urges residents to consider replacing lawns to cut water costs

Lawn replacement program in Westminster helping homeowners with hefty water bills
Lawn replacement program in Westminster helping homeowners with hefty water bills 02:17

One community in Colorado is planting a new idea to cut costs for water usage. Westminster is asking more residents to consider a lawn replacement program. 

Even with snow still settled on the ground, Westminster resident Shelly Woodcock is still envisioning what her garden will look like this year.

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The City of Westminster is urging residents to swap out lawn for other landscaping to save water. City of Westminster

"In the beginning, you're a new homeowner and it's all great. We planted strawberries here on this side, and then this was all grass," said Woodcock.

However, after owning her home for more than 30 years, the hobby beekeeper says her family couldn't keep up with the costs of watering their front yard.

"Back in July of 2021, it was $250 for July, and it was the hottest month with the biggest water," she said.

"There's been this transition really in the past two or three years in Colorado, where folks have said, you know what, I don't really want my grass in the front yard. It takes a lot of water. Costs a lot of money," said Drew Beckwith

Beckwith Westminster's Senior Water Resources Analyst in the Public Works and Utilities Department. He says they have been pushing for more residents to take advantage of one of their lawn replacement programs: a way to cut the costs of watering grass by transforming lawns away from having typical grass on them.

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Westminster hopes more homeowners will trade in lawns for landscaping to save on water costs and usage. City of Westminster

"We help financially support folks to either come to their home with a sawed cutter, rip off the grass, take it off-site and compost it, and then resident has a brown blank slate to plant whatever they want," said Beckwith.

Or residents, like what Woodcock did, can kill their grass on their own and plant over it using planting kits subsidized by the city.

"It was perfect, it was really good," she said. "We're not picking a lot of weeds, there's not a lot of cleanup," said Woodcock.

Woodcock's household water usage in the summer was reduced by 66% after she transformed her yard in 2021.

"And now I think our highest water bill was $65," she said. "It's really made a big difference on a monthly basis for us, and it is more predictable now."

Since 2020, the city has transformed more than 100 lawns each year, and before that offered 240 garden discounts per year. Beckwith says it is a trend that's cultivating a better future for all residents who use water.

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Westminster hopes to transform more lawns into xeriscape landscaping.  City of Westminster

"In the city of Westminster, we use less total water today than we did 20 years ago, in spite of the fact that we have 15,000 more folks that live here," he said. "[It's] because of all of these small, individual actions that residents are making at their own homes and yards."

For more information about Westminster's lawn replacement program, residents can click here. They are still taking applications through February. For information on other cities doing similar programs through Resource Central, click on the website.

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