“Brown is the New Green” has become a great movement in California to alleviate the severe drought the state is facing. The slogan “brown is the new green” emphasizes the need for water in the state as it asks the citizens to cut outdoor water usage in half. The idea behind the slogan is that if your grass is not brown, you are using more water than necessary. Due to the severe drought conditions, irrigation for some public park areas has been temporarily suspended to conserve water.

Some people are against this idea due to the fact that the state can do much more to save water such as fining the citizens not based off of how green their grass is but rather how great their water usage is in their homes.

When driving into a new city, visitors first pay attention to their surroundings such as the trees and grass. These elements make the state more approachable and beautiful. With the state cutting off water usage for lawns to two or more days a week, the homes seems less tended to and cared for.

It is understandable that the efforts to save water are directly in the benefit of the city, as many choose to follow the regulations. According to the Mercury News, “some residents here have slashed water use up to 47 percent below 2013 levels.” These people are now finding that their lawns require much less maintenance with the price of having brown grass in front of their houses. Some homeowners even receive rebates from the city to replace their lawns with water-saving gardens.

An article published in 2015 by the Los Angeles Daily News revealed that “between late January 2014 and June 16, 2015, the [Metropolitan Water] district paid $56.7 million to replace nearly 30 million square feet of grass.” These rebates were given to 15,000 residents and businesses demonstrating the benefit the homeowners get out of the program. However, this program did not prosper for very long, as, the Southern California Water District ended their rebate program in July.

According to an article published in Popular Science, California suspended its drought restrictions on May 18. This means that the communities will be responsible for tracking their own water usage.

Some organizations have found ways to track the water usage in communities. The IBM’s Watson program is one of the programs developed and is now working with environmental analytics company OmniEarth. Their goal is to save water with this program which uses satellite images of areas around houses to see how many homeowners have pools, solar panels, trees, shrubs and grass.

This program is one of the many ways the state can target homeowners who are wasting water in order to educate them with water-saving strategies. This a program has already helped with a 15 percent reduction in water use.

These efforts towards water conservation have a great influence on the prevention of a more severe drought. But should the price be our green lawns? Is there really no other effort the state can make at conserving water to help stop the drought? Rather than fining the citizens $500 a day for their lush grass, cities can encourage people to use programs such as IBM Watson.