{"id":22148,"date":"2025-05-22T17:55:23","date_gmt":"2025-05-22T17:55:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-offers-rebates-to-save-water-with-turf-replacement-program\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:11:41","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:11:41","slug":"cortez-offers-rebates-to-save-water-with-turf-replacement-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-offers-rebates-to-save-water-with-turf-replacement-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez offers rebates to save water with Turf Replacement Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The city\u2019s Turf Replacement Program aims to help preserve water in Cortez and offers rebates to landowners and property owners who utilize it. (City of Cortez\/Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The City of Cortez is promoting water conservation through its Turf Replacement Program, offering rebates to property owners who replace lawns that require high water use with drought-resistant landscaping.<\/p>\n

Funded by a grant from the Colorado Water Conservation Board, the initiative aims to reduce the city\u2019s summer water consumption, which usually doubles from winter water levels due to landscape and lawn irrigation.<\/p>\n

This kind of landscaping is actually called xeriscaping, according to Noah Peterson, project engineer for the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not zeroscaping, but it\u2019s about moving turf,\u201d Peterson told The<\/em> Journal<\/em>. \u201cIf you remove your turf, you can get a rebate for how much you removed. If you can remove 1,000 square feet, you can get $2 per square foot \u2026 it\u2019s really more about water conservation, making sure that we\u2019re doing our part, getting those water bills down as much as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The program, which was launched in April last year, provides up to $2,000 for residential homeowners and $4,000 for commercial property owners to convert nonfunctional turf to low-water-use landscapes featuring native or adapted plants. Approved projects will have at least 50% plant coverage at maturity and exclude artificial turf, concrete or other unnatural surfaces. Applications are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis until Monday, Sept. 1, with projects due by Friday, October 31.<\/p>\n

Peterson added that not using excess water can help prepare for circumstances later where water is needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn doing so, maybe if there\u2019s an emergency down the line, where we have a more serious drought, then we kind of have a better idea of how much water we\u2019re going to have,\u201d Peterson said.<\/p>\n

Another benefit of xeriscaping is saving water without creating excess heat. In areas like Las Vegas that use zeroscaping, heat gets trapped in the rocks that are used in place of landscaping. It also helps reduce water bills.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a good opportunity to reduce those costs a bit, and then also thinking long term,\u201d Peterson said. \u201cThe less water you\u2019re going to be using, the less those bills are going to be over time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Applications are available at City Hall or online<\/a> at www.cortezco.gov\/913\/turf-replacement-program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

City\u2019s program incentivizes low-water landscaping to cut summer water use<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77593,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22148\/revisions\/77593"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22148"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}