Las Vegas homeowners, HOAs, businesses soon to be fined if they water ‘nonfunctional’ grass

The Las Vegas Valley Water District will fine businesses and homeowners associations in the new year if they continue to use water from Lake Mead to irrigate grass it has deemed “nonfunctional.”

A page on the water district’s website said that beginning Jan. 1, irrigation of decorative grass will be classified as water waste and come with fines. Those fines, if approved, will range from $80 for a first offense on a water meter sized for most residential homes to $5,120 for the fifth offense on the largest water meter size.

It’s the first time Southern Nevada water managers have told the public how they intend to enforce Assembly Bill 356, a controversial 2021 law that banned using Colorado River water to irrigate turf that agencies consider nonfunctional or decorative.

Single family homes are not targeted by the law, but the law does apply to grass plots in medians or ones within 10 feet of a road.

Colby Pellegrino, deputy general manager of the water district, said in a Monday interview that the fines are a step to encourage more water conservation for the better of the community. Pellegrino said it would be about 30 days before the water district issues the first violation.

“This is really just the beginning,” Pellegrino said. “We’re going to have to keep assessing what’s left out there and the reasons why people aren’t removing it. We’ll continue to adapt in order to save the water we need despite some really dire conditions on the Colorado River right now.”

The Las Vegas Valley Water District is responsible for the city of Las Vegas and unincorporated Clark County, including the Strip.

The law’s implementation is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit against the Southern Nevada Water Authority, where a growing group of plaintiffs are seeking to challenge the ban. Attorneys have argued it has led to the death of tens of thousands of trees that now have exposed roots — something the water authority has disputed.

A hearing to consider a renewed injunction preventing the law’s enforcement and allowing the lawsuit to become a class-action was scheduled for Monday but was canceled and hasn’t been rescheduled.

“The Las Vegas Valley Water District is just going to forge their own money and just wait for somebody to sue them,” said Laura McSwain, who founded the neighborhood Water Fairness Coalition in opposition to the nonfunctional turf law. “That’s what they’ve done on everything, and they know that most people don’t have the ability to do that.”

Will fines inspire conservation?

Pellegrino said the Southern Nevada Water Authority does not have enforcement power. That responsibility lies with member agencies, meaning the Las Vegas Valley Water District and water districts in Henderson, North Las Vegas and Boulder City, she said.

A spokesperson for North Las Vegas said officials are considering using the same water-waste fee structure to enforce the fines but had not made a final decision. A Henderson spokesperson said the city is finalizing its enforcement strategy to be consistent with the other agencies. Boulder City did not respond to questions before publication.

Unlike the water district’s excessive use fees that charge its biggest water users in an attempt to raise money for conservation, Pellegrino said the only goal of charging a water-waste fine is to encourage compliance with the law.

According to the water authority, roughly 6.5 percent of the Las Vegas Valley’s remaining grass — excluding single-family homes — is designated as nonfunctional, or 20.5 million square feet. That’s the same as about 356 NFL football fields spanning 1,919 properties.

“Our goal is still to facilitate the voluntary removal of nonfunctional turf,” Pellegrino said. “This is a fairly small amount of turf in the valley, when we look at the overall developed acreage of the valley, and it would provide meaningful water savings for a community that’s experiencing really serious stress on its primary water supply.”

The excessive use fees only applied to Las Vegas water district customers, but Pellegrino hopes that all member agencies are in sync on implementing water-waste fine for nonfunctional turf.

Pellegrino encourages any remaining business owners or homeowners’ associations at risk of being fined in 2027 to contact their water district to find a path forward.

McSwain, of the Water Fairness Coalition, said her members have been wondering for years how water managers might approach enforcement of the law. She said many remain resistant to removing their nonfunctional turf because of the connection to the death of tree canopy that helps keep the valley cool.

“It’s really a choice of values,” she said. “I find it interesting that we’ve got these tree campaigns, yet we are not strategically going about protecting the trees we already have.”

The water district’s board will review a business impact study on Nov. 3 probing the service changes, which will get a proper public hearing on Dec. 1, according to the water district.