Los Angeles landscaper, Paul Viers can feel his frustration rising.

It’s a warm Monday afternoon between two heat waves. The Beverly Boulevard traffic dawdles past Burns Park as a handful of mothers watch their children play on the mostly green grass. There is a golf course down the street.

“That’s a big patch of land over there,” Viers says, motioning in the direction of the lush country club. “It’s almost three acres, and they water it every night. But it’s for rich people. That’s what pisses me off.”

This is out-of-keeping with the sunny motto on his business card: “Making the world beautiful one garden at a time.”

Viers has been holding court for the past half hour on the California drought. “It's allowed me to say to my clients 'look, you can have a beautiful garden and use a third or even a fifth or sixth of the water you're using.'”

He is one of a growing chorus of environmentally-minded Californians who feel that many of the government's initiatives to combat the worsening drought have been too little too late.

The last day of September marked the end of the water year. After three consecutive years of drought, the past year was one of the driest on record. According to the California Department of Water Resources, the state enters its fourth year of drought with less than 60 percent of the average rainfall. California's major reservoirs holding less than 57 percent of the usual average.

Programs such as the Cash For Grass program, which are designed to combat the effects of the drought, mean that Viers is as busy as he has been in 15 years of landscaping. Those same local authorities, though, have been slow to act and inconsistent in its message, he says.

"The DWP [Department of Water and Power] - you always just see the sprinklers running everywhere on the side of the roads, in the parks, golf courses. They’re the ones wasting more water than the private consumers. It’s city water and they’re just wasting it.”

Viers’ concern stems from a perceived soft-selling of conservation methods to the public. As of late August, the DWP had not handed out a single drought-related fine.

The lawn rebate program was only brought in in June of this year.

Rebates

“I’ve been doing this a long time and I’ve never seen California this dry in ten years,” says Viers. “It’s a little bit startling and scary, but it's also a good opportunity for landscapers to help people with the environment.”

Thanks to Cash For Grass, Los Angeles County is effectively paying for his services. The rebate of up to three dollars per square foot is available to citizens who rip out their lawns. Viers then replaces them with varying combinations of gravel, cacti and California-native plants.

“People before who probably weren't concerned, are now concerned. I’d say 65 percent of my clients now realize that having grass is a waste of water.”

“It's been good for business, so I’m not complaining,” Viers laughs.

In reality though, the attachment of Californians, and especially Angelenos, to their lawns is no small joke.

Lawn Love

A 2011 study from the Public Policy Institute of California suggests that almost half of California’s urban water usage goes on landscaping. The PPIC report says that 37 percent of urban water is used for ‘residential exteriors,’ while a further ten percent is used for ‘large landscaping.’

NASA Climatologist, Bill Patzert went further. “We’re somewhere like 140 gallons per day per person. Australians use 80 gallons per day per person."

“Sixty percent of the water-use for single family households is in our yards,” he continued. “They have to use less. In many areas now, they’re taking out the English lawn and garden.”

Patzert criticized the authorities’ lack of urgency. “One more year of drought like we had last winter, and the situation is gonna become a lot more dire. We’re not gonna be talking about voluntary conservation.”

Kit Stolz, who facilitates panel discussions about water conservation, agreed. “I went to a meeting in June for the California Association of Water Agencies, and I was surprised that water managers were not as concerned, panicked, alarmed as they might be after two and a half years of drought.”

There are those in the local government who are aware of the extremity of the situation. “We live in a semi-arid climate,” said Shahram Kharaghani of the Department of Public Works. “We need to change our attitude and quickly.”

“I meet on a monthly basis with the Department of Recreation and Parks. I talk to them about how they could minimise water consumption,” Kharaghani said. Precisely what those projects are, though, is unclear.

I was put in touch with Kharaghani by a contact at the Los Angeles planning department - the same department responsible which revoked the permit of the highly-anticipated Slide The City event.

The 1000-foot long slip and slide event event was due to be held in Downtown, Los Angeles at the end of last month. Locations on Figueroa Street and Grand Street were touted as possible locations.

“One of the issues was using water during the drought for recreational purposes,” said Kharaghani.

John Malfatto agrees. “It really did start of with the drought,” he says. The Slide The City co-founder has styled himself the President of Soap Application. “Their [the City’s] concern is that is doesn't really promote the water saving that the state of California is trying to do.”

One of the contributing factors to the event's failure was a petition launched by Cerritos College student, Karina Soto. “I had read an article about it and my initial reaction afterwards was that I was really upset as to why the City would event consider hosting the event,” says Soto.

Soto created her online petition at 2 a.m. and by the following morning she had 300 signatories. Such was the opposition to the idea of Slide the City that by the time the event had its permit revoked, almost 11,000 people had signed.

If there is one lesson that can be learned from the event’s cancellation, it is that the extensive press coverage during the run-up combined with Karina's petition contributed to create a bad public image of the event. The slide was cancelled only nine days before it had been due to go ahead.

“They didn't want to give approval to an event that looked so much like wasting water, even though we were wasting a significant amount less than, say, a golf course in a day,” said Malfatto.

Malfatto mentions that there had been plans to dechlorinate the water and donate it to Los Angeles’ Griffith Park. “I think they were a little misinformed. I think if they really looked into it, they would see that we wouldn’t really waste the water.”

When asked, a Griffith Park press representative was unaware of any such plan.

The slow reaction of the authorities seems to be mirrored by a slow change in attitudes towards water conservation. “I’m rich, this is my property, I can do whatever I want,” says Viers, is the attitude of some of his wealthier acquaintances.

And, indeed, they do.

“I fear we will start to see the same inequalities we see with money will be reflected with water. People who have lots of money will be able to come up with water via truck or well,” Stolz said.

"In the very wealthy communities like Beverly Hills and many places in Orange County, people don’t flinch at their water bills and they’re willing to pay,” said Bill Patzert. “Many of these places look like rain forests.”

This attitude problem may be one of Los Angeles’ largest barriers to efficient water conservation.

“If we go into next year with the fourth year of severe drought, we’re not going to be asking for a voluntary conversation," continues Patzert. "The conversation is going to be very different.”

Aside from Paul Viers’ booming business and the tickets which Slide the City have had to refund, experts and locals paint a picture of water conservation efforts which have so far seemed superficial.

As faucets start to run dry across the state of California, local authorities will need to do far more than just coaxing a concerned majority with lawn rebates and fear-mongering headlines.