California's landscape in some unexpected ways
The drought is changing California's landscape in some unexpected ways.
Not only is it drying up lakes, turning streams to a trickle and causing the land to sink, it's weaning Californians off lush, water-guzzling lawns.
Julio Lopez owns and runs Cadre Landscaping in the Southern California city of Glendale.
The 54-year-old Lopez said he's been so swamped with work lately, he's unable to handle the dozens of calls he gets from homeowners wanting to remove their current lawns and put in drought-resistant ones.
"Most of my business is commercial real estate like banks so I'm too busy to help them out," said Lopez, who employs nine people.
"But we've never seen this amount of phone calls since the rebate program began," he said.
The program Lopez referred to is known as Cash for Grass, a rebate that property owners get for changing their lawns to drought-resistant foliage as the state enters its fourth year of severe drought.
The rebates to replace water-intensive lawns with turf grass started in 2009 in California.
But two recent developments have made them more popular than ever: an increase in the amount of the rebate—in some cases more than $3 a square foot—and having the rebates be tax free.