In Arizona, Reducing Water and Energy Use Through Peer Pressure

There is a social norm in Tucson that says you do not plant a grass lawn. It started to take root in the 1970s when the city government pulled out all of the grass medians in public rights-of-way and replaced them with xeriscaping, a type of drought-tolerant landscaping that looks to non-native eyes like pleasantly manicured desert.

Then the city launched Beat the Peak, a public-service campaign designed to sensitize residents to water conservation during the high summer usage months. In the Southwest, outdoor residential water use often accounts for more than what people consume from their faucets and toilets. Rich Franz-Under, the green building program manager in Pima County, laughs at the memory that the slogan was initially part of a capital improvement deferral, a stopgap for an era when the city didn’t want to have to expand its pipe infrastructure. But over time the campaign evolved into a conservation strategy, and it’s still used today.