Water conservation is a prime focus of this effort, but it's also sustainability efforts.

Meetinghouses of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are getting a landscape makeover, something already in place for new construction in arid regions. All of our new buildings receive a water-wise landscape.

The Water Wise pilot program includes seven existing buildings in the second driest state in the US—Utah.

Churches to be retrofitted are located in Ogden, Clearfield, Salt Lake City, Lehi, Saint George, and Castle Dale.

The objective to significantly reduce water usage. Across these buildings, we're looking at ways of removing lawn and replacing it with planters, low water requiring plants, and also evaluating in that process both perception from neighbors, perception from members. We know that just taking everything out and putting in rocks is not a good option. We want it to be balanced. So we were trying to look at this holistically and find an option that's balancing on the sustainability side.

We'd like to achieve something that we feel we can easily maintain that will

save water, that the neighborhoods will be proud of, and that the membership will be comfortable with. Balanced and sustainable,

a natural progression to good stewardship of the Earth and its resources, which is a long standing doctrine of the Church. I appreciate what the Church is trying to do, because we're here to take care of what God has given us. And so the Church is basically trying to set that example. At the heart of it is our belief that God created this earth for us, that He’s given it to us to use it, but not to excess. We must care for it.

A conviction that the Church is Presiding Bishopric is amplifying. Our Heavenly Father allows us to use earthly resources according to our own free will. Yet our agency should not be interpreted as license to use or consume the riches of this world without wisdom or restraint. Though our efforts have not been and are still not perfect,

we recognize that there is a continual and ongoing Church-wide effort to improve our care of natural resources, including the implementation of best practices and available technology to improve our water efficiency. Over the years, the Church has worked to improve its environmental impact. We take seriously our moral obligation to take care of the earth and to be good neighbors and collaborate in society. The transformation from inefficient to water wise begins with refitted smart irrigation systems that watch the weather. The smart controller, what it does is it uses data, weather information, and it adjusts how the sprinklers run. It's all based on weather and soil and moisture and all those type of different things, so that it’s watering the most efficiently that it can. Add to that, subsurface drip lines that replace above-ground sprinklers. We have lines that go below the soil and are going to apply water in the soil profile, ultimately to the roots of the grass as that grass grows. It cuts down on the amount of evaporation and transpiration that takes place. It keeps the water where it needs to be through drip irrigation and through strategically watering areas with a lot less water, it’s going to be a blessing for our state. Damaged and declining trees and shrubs are replaced with new drought tolerant and esthetically pleasing varieties. And we’ve actually planted more trees back than we have taken out. That include flowering and aromatic species. We’re truly trying to find an option that's going to use less water over time. But other sustainability principles, such as increasing biodiversity or the use of other natural native plants to help with pollinators, for example, those are things we're thinking about. Where applicable, water stingy grass varieties will be used as well.

Meadow grass is a grass that just does really well in in our area here with so much less water. So it still has to be watered, but it’s—you’re going to save between 30 and 40% water in a year. A more sustainable design to be sure, that now, like any pilot program, needs to be maintained, monitored, and its effectiveness measured over a span of 2 to 3 years. And after that, we’re going to present the findings to the Presiding Bishopric and and say, this is what we found out. We’re trying to find—where is that sweet spot, where can we be in being conservation minded and still really have a nice, attractive building that’s complementary to the neighborhood. So it’s really going to fill in. You won’t even see a lot of the mulch. It's going to be lush and green and some mixture of color. Beyond the state of Utah, and as part of our long-term water conservation plans, we are making a concerted effort to extend water wise practices church wide. This pilot program gives us the opportunity to do something that's new, different. It's going to save a lot of water. It's going to save a lot of maintenance. The landscapes are just super clean.