City of McKinney going with water-saving grass

by Brett Ryder of McKinneyNews.net

MCKINNEY — Bill Whitfield. Don’t know much about him.

I do know he’s mayor of our shiny little town upon the hill. I also know that I like his style – even if he is a parochial good ol’ boy – or maybe, in fact, because of it.

Whitfield – and this story isn’t about Whitfield, actually – talked to me today about grass. No, not the stuff you smoke, but the stuff you presumably dump kajillions of gallons of water on to keep it from frying like bacon in the hot Texas sun.

And guess what? Water, dear friends, will one day be as precious as gold in these parts – yes, as rare as a Baptist minister who doesn’t watch a random Three’s Company episode just to remember what life would have been like had he not (publicly, at least) sworn to the Church never to have an ounce of fun again (think drinking, dancing, card playing, etc.) Come on now, I kid the Baptist ministers.

Whitfield knows this (the stuff about the scarcity of water, not Baptist ministers). He’s a forward thinker – at least on this issue – and I like that.

I don’t know if you all have heard, but the Metroplex (and yes, this includes McKinney) is expected to encounter all kinds of problems – namely, water shortage problems – with continued growth.

Growth requires adequate water resources and management. No water means no life, period.

Whitfield told me the city is using about 30-38 MILLION gallons of water daily during the summer months. He also reminded me that in about 20 years, McKinney is expected to be bursting at the development seams at somewhere around 350,000 residents, a number that will surely tax water supplies severely. Add to all this the ridiculous amount of water used for irrigation (60-70 percent of all water used) and, ladies and gents, well, do I really need to do the math for you? Hint: it doesn’t look pretty.

Turns out, McKinney entered into a annually renewable six-year contract last year at $100,000 (per annum) with an outfit known as Urban Solutions Center, an organization tied to Texas A&M University in the business of helping metropolitan areas learn how use natural resources in a responsible, conservation-minded manner.

So, Urban Solutions (US) scientists have come up with a type of grass that, get this, requires 40-50 percent less water than the typical Bermuda or St. Augustine (a particularly gluttonous species with a deceptively pious name) grass thirstily sucking down gallon after gallon of water in lawns across McKinney on a daily basis. It’s called Palisades zoysiagrass.

Clint Wolfe, spokesperson for US, said the grass also has a high drought tolerance. Several studies were conducted on the stuff with nary a drop of water hitting the grass for periods of up to 90 days. While the Palisades went dormant (scientific speak for looked dead as Hades), the grass amazingly came back to life when water was added. How ‘bout that? Wolfe also said the grass generally needs less fertilizer and insecticide treatments, is shade tolerant, and is disease resistant. Ding. Ding.

Urban Solution is ready to slap 20,000 square feet of this stuff down in September on city owned and managed land throughout town – in parks, at fire stations, medians, etc.

Now here’s the no-nonsense, progressive, forward-thinking genius of Whitfield: According to the mayor’s calculations, cutting irrigation by 50 percent would cut irrigation consumption in half.

You may be tempted to believe that I’m making fun of Whitfield. Rest assured I’m not. I applaud his thinking.

If the stuff works as well in the real world (McKinney has the honor of being the first municipality to test the stuff in this region) as it does in the laboratory, well, “it’s on,” as the youngsters like to say. Municipalities and individuals will presumably clamor to buy the stuff in an effort not necessarily to save water (humans are notoriously little concerned with such conservation frivolity) but rather to save a buck or two in the long run.

The seventy-something mayor most likely will be dead by the time hybrid lab grasses like Palisades become mainstream. And therein lies the beauty of the man.

What if we all thought 20-50 years into the future -- a future that doesn't necessarily include us? What if the thoughts that buzz around in our little brains were bigger than “I, me, mine” and instead were infused with a large helping of “we, our, us”?

Kinda has a tinge of a fuzzy, spiritual feel to it, doesn’t it?

For more information about Palisades -- which is already on the market -- click here.