The California swimming pool and spa industry has launched a campaign to market itself as a drought-friendly landscaping option as the state enters a fourth summer of drought that has residential pools and other conspicuous water users under scrutiny.
As residents struggle to reduce water consumption by 25 per cent, the California Pool and Spa Association is promoting a campaign called Let's Pool Together and is lobbying water districts to quash proposed bans on filling pools and spas.
The industry cites an in-house study that found that a standard-sized pool, plus decking, uses one-third the amount of water as an irrigated lawn after an initial fill.
"We're not saying, 'Solve the drought, put in a pool,' but the bottom line is people who put in a pool are making a decision to do something more water efficient with their backyard. They're saving water," said John Norwood, the California Pool and Spa Association's president. "Pools are landscaping."
Some water conservation experts question the pool industry's math and say, at best, residential pools and lawns use roughly the same amount of water after an initial fill. There are 1.18 million residential pools in California, according to Metrostudy, which tracks housing information.
And at least a dozen cities and water districts in the hardest-hit areas of the state have passed bans on new swimming pool permits, filling new swimming pools and draining and refilling existing pools.
One of the poshest areas of Orange County approved a ban on filling or refilling residential pools and the city of San Jose, which is trying to cut water use by 30 per cent, did the same in April.
Even as cities and agencies crack down, contractors in some parts of the state are seeing a small uptick in demand as the recession ends. Applications for new pool permits declined steeply during the recession, but pool contractors in some areas without pool-related water restrictions say business is up this spring.
The rebound is slower in California than other warm-weather states like Florida, Texas and the Carolinas that aren't experiencing intense drought, said Toby Morrison, Metrostudy's national sales manager.
Experts caution that the pool-versus-lawn calculations depend on too many variables to be reliable, including how much water splashes out, whether there's a pool cover to prevent evaporation and how often the lawn was watered before it was ripped out.
In the end, the water used for pools and lawns is roughly the same, said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, a non-profit research institute focused on the environment and sustainability. And letting a lawn die or replanting with desert landscaping uses dramatically less water than a pool, so the comparison misses the point, he said.
"These are luxuries and we're in a really bad drought and everybody needs to step up instead of pointing the finger at the other guy," Gleick said.
This content appears as provided to The Globe by the originating wire service. It has not been edited by Globe staff.