05/14/2026
People in the Columbia TN water system need to read this. Notice this warning, “As the Colorado River basin enters what hydrologists are now calling a multi-decade megadrought, every gallon redirected from decorative grass to actual human use has measurable downstream consequences. “. People dependent on The Duck River for water provision are headed for an irreversible catastrophe due to the fact they possess no major reservoir to capture the flow that passes through. Whatever reservoir that is upstream has already passed a cap on draw to downstream folks like us. To continue to go breakneck speed to development knowing that there is no water bank to go to when a severe drought hits is irresponsible and insane action. Not a pessimist. Just a realist. The people personally responsible for this malfeasance must have property outside this water dependent system. Tragic.
There is a specific kind of grass in Colorado that exists for one reason: to be looked at while being mowed. It lives in the landscaped median of an interstate. It runs in a strip behind the gas station.
It carpets the perimeter of the office park, the corporate campus, the suburban big box, the front of the municipal building. It's almost always Kentucky bluegrass — a species native to the cool, wet climates of Eurasia and the northeastern United States — and in Colorado's semi-arid Front Range, keeping it green requires roughly twice the water of native buffalo grass or blue grama.
Nobody walks on it. Nobody plays on it. It exists because, for about a century, that's what commercial landscaping defaulted to.
On January 1, 2026, that default ends. Colorado Senate Bill 24-005, signed by Governor Jared Polis in 2024, prohibits local governments from allowing the installation, planting, or placement of nonfunctional turf, artificial turf, or invasive plant species on commercial, institutional, or industrial property, on common-interest community property (including HOA common areas), or in street rights-of-way, parking lots, medians, and transportation corridors.
The law applies to new development and redevelopment — it does not require ripping out existing turf, and it does not affect residential properties. State facilities have been operating under the same rules since January 1, 2025.
A follow-up bill, HB25-1113, extends similar restrictions to multifamily residential housing of more than 12 dwelling units starting in 2026, and requires local governments to enact their own regulations on remaining residential property by 2028.
Native and water-wise alternatives — buffalo grass, blue grama, Indian ricegrass, native wildflowers, drought-adapted hybrid turf species — are explicitly allowed.
The math behind the law is stark. Cities use only about 7 percent of Colorado's water, but roughly half of that goes to landscaping.
Outdoor water use is the single largest factor in most municipal water budgets. As the Colorado River basin enters what hydrologists are now calling a multi-decade megadrought, every gallon redirected from decorative grass to actual human use has measurable downstream consequences.
Aurora, Castle Rock, Broomfield, and Grand Junction had already passed local versions before the state stepped in. SB24-005 establishes the floor for the entire state — and writes native xeriscaping into Colorado law as the new default for the kind of grass nobody was using anyway.
