The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is working across the western United States to find ways to conserve water. This includes the installation of thousands of smart controllers and eliminating nonfunctional grass in some areas.
In the Intermountain West region, water is increasingly scarce. The Church is continually updating building facilities to manage water use and avoid waste.
Earlier this year, the Church announced hopes to save over 500 million gallons of water a year thanks to the installation of over 3,000 smart controllers at facilities across the Intermountain West.
“The smart controllers are able to adjust for the weather, so it ends up saving a lot of water that otherwise wouldn’t be saved when you’re doing manual adjustments on the controller,” said Andrew Stringfellow, the Church’s Intermountain Facilities Services landscape manager.
Water-wise landscaping
The Church has been redesigning landscaping around Church facilities to better reflect local climates and save water since the early 2000s, according to a recent news release on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
That includes gradually phasing out purely decorative or “nonfunctional” grass for new meetinghouses and reducing or completely eliminating nonfunctional grass in Washington County, Utah, and southern Nevada.
The Church is also working to evaluate the use of water-wise landscaping in Central Utah and the Eastern Snake River Basin in Idaho.
The list of considerations includes:
- Total square footage of nonfunctional turf
- Water use compared to similarly sized properties
- Water usage anomalies
- Age and design of irrigation systems
- Plant material and irrigation system design
The aim is for at least 50% water savings, compared to a traditional lawn-heavy landscape.
A frequently asked questions page from the Church Newsroom notes that the Church will retain grass lawns on select properties for active recreational purposes.
Similar efforts to use smart controllers and new water-wise landscaping have been implemented on Temple Square in Salt Lake City. This includes planting 30% more trees, removing 35% of the landscape’s turf grass, adding more water-efficient plants to flower beds and reducing the annual number of flowers and plants used in landscaping by 30%.
Environmental stewardship
President Russell M. Nelson has given prophetic counsel to “care for the earth, be wise stewards over it and preserve it for future generations. And we are to love and care for one another.”
In a recent interview with the Church News, Jenica Sedgwick, the Church’s sustainability manager who operates under the direction of the Presiding Bishopric, offered insight into the Church’s focus to conserve water on Temple Square and the western United States.
“It’s not just conserving water for conservation’s sake,” she said. “This is about being aware of our environment, aware of our water availability and aligning what [the Church does] to that ecological context.”
