The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California announced today it will stop accepting rebate applications this week.

With demand soaring due to the ongoing drought, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California announced today it will stop accepting rebate applications this week from people who rip out turf lawns in favor of low-water-use landscaping.

MWD officials said the district’s funds for turf rebates have been fully allocated, even though the district’s board vastly increased its conservation- program budget.

“We knew that the popularity of the turf program would exhaust the available funds at some point, but even we didn’t predict just how popular turf rebates would become,” said Jeffrey Kightlinger, MWD general manager. “Metropolitan is proud to have accelerated the movement by hundreds of thousands of Southern Californians to embrace a new outdoor aesthetic and lock in water savings permanently.”

On May 26, the MWD board increased the district’s $100 million conservation program budget to $450 million, noting that requests for rebates for turf replacement skyrocketed following Gov. Jerry Brown’s demand for a 25 percent reduction in water use statewide.

Kightlinger said all of the funding available for turf rebates has been allocated for projects that have been completed or others that have had their plans approved. He said the refunds spurred the removal of more than 150 million square feet of turf.

The district still has rebate funds available for people who install water-saving fixtures, such as low-flow toilets, high-efficiency washing machines, weather-based irrigation controllers and rotating sprinkler nozzles.

https://patch.com/california/northridge/rebates-ending-ripping-out-lawn