Large Landscape Water Users: If You Ignore Your Water Consumption, You Will Watch Your Money Evaporate
Neighborhood greenbelts and parks, golf courses, corporate campuses, and large retail centers are all examples of large landscape areas that can use significant amounts of water. Exactly how much water those types of places use can vary, but by ensuring that their irrigation systems and water consumption is efficiently managed, the managers of those facilities can make a big impact on their financial bottom line. The City of Chandler understands this and offers large landscape water users a free program that helps see the big water picture, beyond just the numbers on a water bill.
Large landscape water customers include homeowner associations (HOAs) and their management companies, commercial and retail center developers, or anyone else involved in maintaining large irrigated facilities. The costs associated with your facility maintenance and water consumption are too important to neglect. Chandler’s free Large Landscape Water Efficiency Program is proven to reduce overwatering, on average, by more than 50% through improved landscape irrigation efficiency.
Program Administered by Waterfluence
The Large Landscape Water Efficiency Program is administered by our third-party provider, Waterfluence, an organization that partners with many water agencies to improve water efficiency at large commercial and public irrigation sites. Waterfluence believes that more than a third of all water used to irrigate commercial and public urban landscapes is not beneficially applied, and that people are the key to improving irrigation efficiency.
Waterfluence participants have access to billing cycle reports based on site-specific characteristics and real-time weather. The data they collect is shared with program participants in reports that are easy for property owners and landscape managers to understand. Their algorithms continually analyze water use at each site to identify leaks, seasonal misapplications, and poor sprinkler performance. They not only find existing or potential irrigation problems, they offer solutions.
Reports for Stakeholders
If you are a stakeholder in a commercial or public irrigation site, the Large Landscape Water Efficiency Program is a valuable tool. Water bills often fail to effectively communicate irrigation performance and exclude key stakeholders. But the reports generated by Waterfluence include a historical summary of irrigation use compared to a customized landscape water budget. Calculating water budgets can be difficult, so we do it for you.
Waterfluence budgets are designed to provide ample water for attractive, healthy landscapes. Each site gets a customized water budget based on estimates of irrigated area, type of plants, type of irrigation system, and local daily weather (evapotranspiration minus effective rainfall). Minimizing waste is the objective as excess water is usually lost as runoff, percolates past root zones, compromises plant health, damages surrounding structures, erodes paving, and needlessly increases water costs.
The reports also help stakeholders compare water use for multiple sites, compare landscape maintenance companies by how efficiently they irrigate, see rebate offers from the City of Chandler and, in some cases, request a free landscape field survey from an irrigation expert. This program will help all stakeholders better understand, prioritize, communicate,
and act on solutions toward the non-controversial goal of improving irrigation efficiency.
How to Sign Up for the Program
Access to the Large Landscape Water Efficiency Program is limited, and registration is required.
If you are a water bill customer, property manager, HOA board member, maintenance manager, or landscape contractor, you can be a water conservation hero and use your influence to encourage your organization to join the program. In a desert climate like Arizona, it is one of the most cost-effective programs available to balance water demands with limited water supplies.
If you have any questions, contact Chandler’s Water Conservation staff at 480-782-3589. For more information visit, Large Landscape Water Efficiency Program.