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82 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 394 (2013-2014)
Banning Lawns

handle is hein.journals/gwlr82 and id is 428 raw text is: Banning Lawns Sarah B. Schindler* ABSTRACT Recognizing their role in sustainability efforts, many local governments are enacting climate change plans, mandatory green building ordinances, and sustainable procurement policies. Thus far, however, local governments have largely ignored one of the most pervasive threats to sustainability-lawns. This Article examines the trend toward sustainability mandates by considering the implications of a ban on lawns, the single largest irrigated crop in the United States. Green yards are deeply seated in the American ethos of the sanctity of the single-family home. This psychological attachment to lawns, however, results in significant environmental harms: conventional turfgrass is a non-native monocrop that contributes to a loss of biodiversity and typically requires vast amounts of water, pesticides, and gas-powered mowing. In this Article, I consider municipal authority to ban or substantially limit preexisting lawns and mandate their replacement with native plantings or pro- ductive fruit- or vegetable-bearing plants. Although this proposal would no doubt prove politically contentious, local governments-especially those in drought-prone areas-might be forced to consider such a mandate in the fu- ture. Furthering this practical reality, I address the legitimate zoning, police power, and nuisance rationales for the passage of lawn bans, as well as the likely challenges they would face. I also consider more nuanced regulatory approaches that a municipality could use to limit lawns and their attendant environmental harms, including norm change, market-based mechanisms such as progressive block pricing for water, and incentivizing the removal of lawns. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ................................................. 395 I. L AW NS .................................................. 400 A . H istory .............................................. 400 B . Benefits ............................................. 403 C. H arm s .............................................. 405 * Associate Professor of Law, University of Maine School of Law. I am grateful to Dmi- try Barn, Marya Baron, Jason Czarnezki, Keith Hirokawa, Stephen Miller, Tim Mulvaney, Dave Owen, Aaron Perzanowski, Christopher Serkin, and Jennifer Wriggins for their helpful com- ments. Thanks also to the participants of the Sabin Colloquium on Innovative Environmental Law Scholarship at Columbia Law School, the University of Washington Young Environmental Scholars Workshop, the Local Government Law Works-in-Progress Conference at Marquette University Law School, the Colloquium on Environmental Scholarship at Vermont Law School, and the Scholarship Development Workshop at Albany Law School. Special appreciation to Ciera Dye for excellent research assistance. April 2014 Vol. 82 No. 2 394

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