Suburban sprawl also contributes to water scarcity because it promotes more lawn areas and larger lots planted with turf grass.

A study in the Seattle metropolitan area found significant differences in water use among suburban housing patterns. As might be expected, large suburban “estate” properties consumed as much as 16 times more water than homes on a more traditional urban grid, with smaller lots.

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According to the EPA, 32 percent of residential water use on average is for outdoor purposes. Per capita use of public water is about 50 percent higher in the West than the East, however, mostly due to the amount of landscape irrigation in the West. Some communities, particularly in the arid West, are responding to the drain on water supplies from outdoor water use by requiring reductions in turf grass area.

Moreover, soils beneath our developed turf sites are often as impervious as roads and parking lots. Development involves wholesale grading of the site, removal of topsoil, severe erosion during construction, compaction by heavy equipment and filling of depressions. Indeed, some studies have shown that with these practices, the infiltration rate of urban soils actually approaches those of impervious surfaces.

Sources: EPA, Clean Water Through Conservation, EPA 841-B-95-002 (April 1995); Sakrison, R., Water Use in Compact Communities: The Effect of New Urbanism, Growth Management and Conservation Measures on Residential Water Demands (University of Washington, 1997); Schueler, T., The Peculiarities of Perviousness, Watershed Protection Techniques, Vol. 2, Issue 1, 1995.