For Mormons, a perfect lawn is a godly act. But the drought is catching up with them

In June 2021, Marlene and Emron Esplin stopped watering their front lawn. Given that the Esplins live in Utah, where maintaining lush green turf is often associated with the fulfillment of a biblical prophecy, the decision to let their grass go brown was a radical act.

A month earlier, Utah Governor Spencer Cox had declared a state of emergency due to a record lack of precipitation and he asked the public to pray for rain. He declared a second drought-related state of emergency in April 2022.

It explains why Utah uses more municipal water than any state in the country, except for Idaho. And why the state has long supported a heavily subsidized water pricing system and zoning laws that encourage, if not flat-out demand, a yard full of well-tended grass.

Frankel and others are lobbying Utah government leaders to enact aggressive water conservation policies before it is too late. But what may ultimately carry the most weight are the efforts by Latter-day Saints like the Esplins who are seeking a paradigm shift in their community to undo the irrigation mentality. They want to convince fellow Mormons that the desert is already beautiful and has a divinely created ecological wisdom all its own.

Unlike other European immigrants colonizing the west, the Mormons were not looking for gold or other material riches. They were on a mission to establish their holy land, a place called Zion. By 1865, approximately 65,000 Mormons had settled in Utah. And they had built some 1,000 miles of canals to irrigate nearly 150,000 acres of semi-arid farmland. It was a triumph of Manifest Destiny unlike anything else in the American west.

Over the last two decades, as megadrought took hold in the south-west, arid states such as California, Nevada and Arizona, have been implementing increasingly aggressive conservation measures. Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles budget millions of dollars to pay residents to pull out their lawns while water cops patrol neighborhood streets to make sure everyone is following the rules. But until last summer, few conservation measures were implemented in Utah.

When recently asked for examples of properties where lawns had been allowed to turn brown, the Mormon church communication office declined to comment.

Ingebretsen says he has observed more Latter-day Saints members in recent years who are concerned about climate crisis and have started to cut back on watering their lawns. But he is disappointed at how Mormon church leadership has not taken aggressive steps to set a public example on water conservation.

As for the Esplins, they completely deprived their front lawn of water for the second summer in a row and now it is good and dead. A patchwork of dried yellow grass is interspersed with bare soil and the occasional clumps of weeds. Curious neighbors passing by have asked what is going on.

The Esplins have recently taken advantage of a design subsidy program and met with a landscape architect. They will install drought-tolerant plants, Dutch clover for ground cover and a drip irrigation system as their budget permits.