Lawns vs. Agriculture

“The average Times reader sneering at those desert lawns from the Upper West Side might want to think about the canned tomatoes, avocados, and almonds in his or her kitchen before denouncing the irresponsible lifestyles of the California émigrés.”

Clearly, there is much debate about who uses too much water, and whether agriculture is assuming a fair share of the burden in responding to the drought — and the role of farms and food is an issue that The Times will be examining as we move ahead with this series.

But while urban consumption is not the main culprit here, it may be wrong to suggest, as Mr. Johnson does, that lawn watering is incidental to the problem. I don’t know what it’s like up in Marin County (or Brooklyn!), the two places Mr. Johnson calls home, but I have spent much of my time in recent days traveling around Southern California reporting this series, and I have been struck by the vast expanses of lawn I’ve seen (with this newfound sensitivity) in Beverly Hills, Cowan Heights and Palm Springs, just to name a few of the more obvious culprits. Some of these lawns may be benefiting from recycled wastewater but what Mr. Brown and other water officials have been saying is that cracking down on water-wasting ornamental lawns is important, in terms of wasted water, but also because of perceptions as they try to rally the state to deal with this problem.

Why, officials are asking, should any Californian — be it a farmer being forced to fallow a field in Porterville or a family with children brushing their teeth in Riverside — pitch in to deal with this crisis if some communities seem to be permitted to pour gallons of water to keep ornamental lawns green?

California vs. Manhattan

“First of all, Mother Nature didn’t intend for 2 million people to live on Manhattan Island either. Mother Nature would also be baffled by skyscrapers, the Delaware Aqueduct, and the Lincoln Tunnel.”

I take Mr. Johnson’s point on the idea that our society is a pioneering one, always looking for ways to open the most inhospitable areas for human habitation. And it’s true, as he notes, that New York City is also a feat of modern engineering. That said, I’m not sure I buy the comparison of California with Manhattan. Electricity and water are not the same kinds of resources, in terms of transportability, or of quantity.

As someone who lived, worked and grew up in New York City and Westchester and Putnam Counties, I spent a lot of time around the reservoir system (including, I now confess, illegally swimming as a teenager in more than a few of the prime ones). Let me state the obvious, at least from my own experience. There is a lot more water in New York State and it seems a lot easier to get it to Manhattan than to move water from Northern California to Southern California. And the drought California faces is not a short-term problem, like a bad winter; it’s a very challenging long-term problem that is, at least for now, demanding a change in human behavior.