New turf law sows doubt in Glendale

Mayor Ara Najarian said he wants to give homeowners the choice of replacing most of their front landscaping with artificial turf, while his colleagues, on the other hand, think it should be less than half that amount.

The City Council on Tuesday offered differing opinions on how to update the city’s landscaping ordinance to permit artificial turf on front lawns. The discussion took place after Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday signed AB 1164 into law, which prohibits municipalities from banning the installation of artificial turf.

Regulating the material, however, is being left up to cities.

Fake grass was only allowed in the backyards of Glendale homes until recently. With the state’s ongoing water crisis, residents should have more options, Najarian said.

“I really think we should leave the right to our residents to place as much artificial turf on their front lawns as possible because it is a drought issue,” Najarian said.

City code states that 50% of frontyards — also known as setbacks — should be covered with live plants, including drought-tolerant ones, and 40% of the overall lot area should be some type of landscaping, such as grass.

Of that landscaping, 40% can be replaced with hardscape material such as decomposed granite.

Najarian said he wants residents to be able to add 80% of artificial turf within landscaped areas.

Councilwoman Laura Friedman said artificial turf should be treated like any other kind of hardscape, meaning no more than 40%, despite her own environmental concerns.

She called the fake-grass mandate an overreaction to the drought. Artificial turf isn’t permeable like grass, meaning there will be more rainwater runoff that ends up in storm drains, Friedman said.

“We want water to get into the ground, into our aquifers in a drought,” she said. “Talk about being counterproductive.”

While specific requirements are not laid out by the new state law, City Atty. Michael Garcia said 40% would be a reasonable amount.

Between 20% and 30% is more ideal for Councilman Vartan Gharpetian, who said he hasn’t received a single phone call from a resident demanding the right to put in artificial turf.

Either way, the inclusion of artificial turf would only take up a few hundred square feet or a patch of a front lawn, he said.

Gharpetian said he is approaching the issue of artificial turf with caution and shared Friedman’s worries about rainwater runoff.

“I don’t really want to promote [artificial turf],” he said in a phone interview after the meeting “There are so many other turfs that take one-tenth the water — Bermuda, St. Augustine — and they’re green.”

Some council members also took issue with the fact that any violation of a proposed code amendment would more than likely be reported as a complaint than discovered by the short-staffed code-enforcement division.

Friedman said she’d like to see some sort of inspection process, while Gharpetian said whenever residents plan on overhauling their lawns, they should be required to inform the city to ensure compliance.

“If they want to remove everything, they need to come to the city and let us know what they want to replace it with. That’s fair,” Gharpetian said.

Re-Scape, a North Bay Area-based consulting firm hired by the city, is recommending 35% of landscaped areas be allowed to be replaced with hardscape material, while city staffers suggest no more than 65% artificial turf.

Councilwoman Paula Devine said she preferred having that number somewhere in the neighborhood of 50%.

City staffers are expected to return with a series of options for the council on Dec. 8, the earliest an ordinance can be adopted.