Moscow Cemetery Water Use, Community Solar Move Forward

MOSCOW – Next steps for a community solar project and for reducing water use at the cemetery were discussed by the Moscow Sustainable Environment Commission at its Tuesday meeting.

Community solar atop the Moscow Police Department building at 155 Southview Ave.:

The commission and its subsidiary Climate Action Working Group (CAWG) have met with Avista utility company, the nonprofit Community Action Partnership serving north Idaho (https://www.cap4action.org/), a financial donor identified at an earlier meeting as former state Sen. David Nelson, and others in the past two months (see earlier article at https://moscowidaho.news/2026/05/22/group-looks-to-get-mpd-rooftop-solar-before-city-council-for-2027-budgeting/).

Evan Holmes, City Council liaison for the commission, said the council would be more interested in forwarding the project if it is presented with a specific plan and funding source. With those, he said, he would aim to place the project among the city’s priorities for the coming year. 

The goal is to develop an overall plan for council approval and then work on details of specific options, said Kelli Cooper, city sustainability programs coordinator and staff liaison to the commission. 

Preliminary cost information gathered by the CAWG had one estimate of $92,000 for the entire solar array atop the MPD building, said CAWG member Tina Hilding. Another estimate from Ellensburg Solar was “much, much higher,” Cooper said, and would pay for itself in 12 years. The city typically wants projects to pay for themselves within five years, she said.  

She identified next steps as determining specific options from Avista and getting commitments from the donor in writing about how funding will work and where power assistance will go.

Xeriscaping at Moscow Cemetery: 

“Everybody loves the green lawn,” was the reaction from the Moscow Cemetery sexton and a maintenance worker when she first approached them, said Commissioner Trish Hartzell.

But after some discussion, she said sexton Max Lusco agreed that low-water landscaping phased in over many years, with input from the community and families of the interred, might be considered. Families might determine which plants they want at their loved ones’ graves, she said. 

Lusco advised starting with the oldest part of the cemetery, she said, where the landscaping won’t be disturbed by new graves.

New to the commission, Hartzell originated the cemetery project saying, “They are a good place to start because they use a lot of water.

“People have been getting rid of lawns because they also require chemicals and gas for mowing.” Low-water landscapes save time and require fewer maintenance workers, she said. They also attract birds and pollinators.

“If we get to a point where we cannot use as much water, people would use it for food gardens and not for lawns,” Hartzell said. City Councilman Holmes concurred, citing xeriscaping as preferable to the brown lawns seen in California and the Southwest after watering was restricted. 

City Hall xeriscaping was resisted, noted Chair Steve McGeehan, but now looks much better than the previous, rather shabby lawn. 

Going forward, Hartzell said she would contact the Moscow Cemetery board and the Latah County Historical Society, which has oversight of older areas of the cemetery. She said sustainability groups and native plant societies might be approached for funding and support. 

She said terms like “beautification” and “native plants” should be used as the project is promoted, since “xeriscape” connotes “zero-landscape” for some people. 

As an aside, Harzell noted that she doesn’t intend to use a cemetery and would like to have the choice to opt out of funding the cemetery district with her property taxes. 

She recommended new varieties of short, low-water microclover, if a lawn-like landscape is desired. Trees might need to be replaced with low-water varieties, Holmes noted, since they are watered with the lawns.

The next regularly scheduled meeting of the Sustainable Environment Commission will be Aug. 18.