SNWA offers Las Vegas residents incentive to get rid of grass

Brian Will
·2 min read
2

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) – For the last 20 years, the Southern Nevada Water Authority has been giving Las Vegas residents cash for each square foot of grass they convert to a desert landscape. That incentive went up just for 2024 from $3 a square foot to $5 a square foot of grass converted.

“It’s a one-year thing so it’s projects that have to be started and finished in 2024,” Toby Bickmore with the Southern Nevada Water Authority explained.

He said it is the highest the incentive has ever been and likely will be.

“The average conversion is roughly about one thousand square feet so the average rebate is about $5,000 from the time they apply to where we say okay you can start is usually about three weeks of time.”

Matthew Goodman and his crew at Tough Turtle Turf are seeing more and more requests for turf as the incentive goes up. 8 News Now met up with him at one of three installs he had scheduled on Monday.

“My average job is roughly between $8,000-$12,000 and that does seem like a lot however in this specific example this gentleman is getting roughly $8,000 from SNWA,” Goodman explained.

<em>For the last 20 years, the Southern Nevada Water Authority has been giving Las Vegas residents cash for each square foot of grass they convert to desert landscape. That incentive went up just for 2024 from $3 a square foot to $5 a square foot of grass converted. (KLAS)</em>
For the last 20 years, the Southern Nevada Water Authority has been giving Las Vegas residents cash for each square foot of grass they convert to desert landscape. That incentive went up just for 2024 from $3 a square foot to $5 a square foot of grass converted. (KLAS)

That homeowner’s water bill will also go down with the average square foot of grass taking about 55 gallons of water a year. The incentive is meant to conserve water and keep grass in places where it is used like parks.

Last year, over 12 million square feet of grass was converted and that was when the incentive was at $3 a square foot. Now this year at $5 a square foot SNWA is seeing around a thousand applications each month for the rebate program which has a budget of about $24 million.

The incentive is only for residential while commercial can still get $3 a square foot. Both incentives are only available throughout 2024. But the entire conversion has to take place this year. In 2027 businesses will have to convert their grass to desert landscaping by law and if they don’t do so soon, they could miss out on this incentive. For more information click HERE.

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