By Carson Lane
For Reporting Texas

AUSTIN — As the Central Texas drought continues, despite last weekend’s thunderstorms, residents are disregarding watering restrictions in attempt to sustain their scorched lawns.

Now Austin Water, the local utility, is offering money to residents who put down their hoses and let their grass die.

In Austin, between 70 and 80 percent of the residential lawns are landscaped with St. Augustine grass, said Dean Morin, a sales associate at The Grass Patch, an Austin-based landscape contractor. But even though St. Augustine is an inexpensive species, it is not appropriate for Austin because of the amount of water and fertilizer the plant requires, according to Austin Water spokeswoman Jill Mayfield.

The city of Austin is offering incentives to homeowners who replace St. Augustine grass with species needing less water. Photo by Grace Sherry

That’s why Austin Water is now willing to give Austin residents $10 per 100 square feet of lawn to remove St. Augustine and plant less-demanding varieties such as buffalo or Bermuda grass. Residents will be required to stop watering their grass immediately, and then to replace it after the drought ends in order to be paid.

“We already offer rebates to replace turf at $20 per 100 square feet for native plantings and $30 per 100 square feet for non-irrigated areas,” Mayfield said in an email. “We wanted to offer something to customers who prefer turf but want a more drought-tolerant variety. We needed to keep the incentive in line with what we currently offer and make it appropriate to the potential water savings.”

To qualify for the program, residents must replace at least their entire front or backyards, the soil must be a minimum of six inches deep, and customers must be willing to tolerate dead grass until the drought ends. There is also a 20,000-square-foot limit on replacing grasses.

“This has already been done in other cities, but we felt that the severity of the current drought made it appropriate in Austin,” Mayfield said.

The deadline to apply for the incentive is Friday, Oct. 14.  In the first two weeks of the program, 250 applications had been submitted.

According to two local landscapers, the two likely replacements, buffalo and Bermuda grass, are also problematic.

“Neither buffalo or Bermuda are shade-tolerant,” Morin said in an email. “The city needs to offer zoysia sod for the lawns that have shade issues. Also, buffalo does not stand up to ‘foot traffic’ very well and is not very thick or as hardy as the rest of our warm-season turfs.”

Emily Levings, who works at Designing for Place, agreed and explained in detail how the two alternative grasses would fare in Austin.

“Buffalo grass is a native meadowgrass that does well in drought and cold,” she said in an email, while noting that it becomes dormant without about an inch of water each week. “The main drawbacks are that it is not typically shade tolerant, and does not compete well with weeds. Therefore it tends to require regular maintenance – weeding and soil amendment – to cultivate a buffalo grass turf area. It is also rather difficult to establish, as compared to other sods such as zoysia.”

“It also does not have the conventional tidy lawn look that many people seek, because it should not be mowed to under three inches in height,” she added. “However many people appreciate and allow the more natural aesthetic of the grass.”

She called Bermuda grass “a very resilient grass,” which is good and bad. “Once it’s established, it is very difficult to eradicate from adjacent beds or other groundcovers,” she said. “It also does not tolerate shade well and goes dormant in the summer, though responds better than buffalo grass to both conditions. It is, however, more susceptible to pests and disease than buffalo.”

The cost for removing St. Augustine is approximately 30 cents a square inch, and the price for installing new grass would be 50 to 75 cents per square inch for Bermuda and 75 cents to $1 for buffalo, Morin said.

David Sterrett, a 55-year-old software developer and homeowner, said he and his wife considered taking the incentive because they had been interested in planting native grasses, but decided against it.

“For starters, the rebate is not enough incentive to rip out an existing lawn and re-establish a new lawn. Secondly, the requirement to have dead grass for an indefinite time frame is a big turn-off given the prospect of current drought lasting several years,” Sterrett said in an email.

Morin added that the city’s biggest challenges in implementing the program will be ensuring that people have excavated enough old soil, as well as adding soil without creating drainage issues or more management costs. The city of Austin is offering seminars for homeowners and school groups about proper use of irrigation equipment.

“I feel that a lot more water savings could be realized if homeowners took the time to understand the controller operation and continued monitoring the settings and durations,” Morin said. “The old saying, ‘Guns don’t shoot people—people do,’ applies to irrigation. Controllers don’t waste water—people do.”