Salt Lake City is the largest metropolitan area within Utah and the Salt Lake Valley. The city has a population in excess of 360,000 (plus 150,000 daily commuters) and encompasses approximately 110 square miles within the lower Jordan River Basin. Commercial and industrial users in the city receive half of water deliveries and residential and institutional users receive the remainder.

Salt Lake City’s Department of Public Utilities has a variety of outdoor water conservation programs for its customers that focus on different landscape topics. These programs include best management practices for water efficiency in the landscape, landscape and park strip plant lists, irrigation and landscape evaluations/audits, planting and landscape maintenance guides, and virtual water conservation garden tours. The city also participates in the state’s Flip Your Strip program, which incentivizes the removal of lawn from park strips with a $1.25 per square foot rebate. Related to turfgrass water use, the city has also developed an innovative conservation program, SLC Turf Trade.

Following a 2020 utility master plan update, which evaluated indoor and outdoor water use, the city determined the need to decrease outdoor irrigation from a city-wide average of 38” to 24” annually to meet conservation goals. Additional evaluations of the city’s landscapes and water use characteristics by the WaterMAPS™ and Water Check programs indicated that 68% of the city’s households were overwatering, presenting a significant opportunity for reducing outdoor water use. The city was already taking a multi-faceted approach to landscape water conservation but needed a program to assist those customers who wanted to reduce their water use but still needed functional and practical turfgrass areas. In 2021, SLC Turf Trade was born. 

In cooperation with USU’s Center for Water Efficient Landscaping and the Turfgrass Water Conservation Alliance, a customized blend of turfgrass seed was developed for the program and packaged for sale by the city. The grasses needed to have the color and quality of standard Kentucky bluegrass lawns, good pest and disease resistance, and—most importantly—a drastically reduced water requirement (the seed mixture uses 30-40% less water than standard varieties). Educational videos demonstrating the process for transitioning an existing lawn to the low water use seed were created. The videos were filmed at the city’s Concord Lift Station, which was planted and established with the seed in the fall of 2021, and still serves as a practical demonstration of the program today.