Keep your lawn green while saving water with simple steps

Against a backdrop of tighter water restrictions and lake levels that seem to fall by the day, the Texas Water Smart coalition wants residents to know that limiting sprinkler use won’t leave their yards a desert wasteland, but will actually create stronger, healthier landscapes.

“People still really want to have a nice outdoor environment, but they want to plant things they feel will be hardy and good for them,” said Johnette Taylor of Roundtree Landscaping in Dallas, who is state landscape director for the Texas Nursery and Landscape Association. “It’s a big switch from a few years ago. Now, they want a nice yard, but they want to be water-conscious, too.”

Still, it’s easy enough to find someone in almost any neighborhood around Dallas who runs their sprinklers three, four, even seven days a week, dousing streets and sidewalks along with their lawns. And when water utilities have to impose tough limits on landscape irrigation, those lush landscapes take the biggest hit.

“But since most of us are watering twice a week, even going back to once a week shouldn’t hurt the plants too badly,” said Taylor, a member of the Water Smart coalition.

“Watch your irrigation system run, and see how long it takes for the water to puddle up on you or run off onto the sidewalks or driveway,” she said. “That’s usually about three, four, five, six minutes. You want to set the sprinklers to run to that point and then let that area sit for an hour or two.

“If you have six or seven [sprinkler] zones in your yard, let it run through, then let it sit for half an hour before you start the next cycle,” Taylor said. “If you do that cycle-and-soak two or even three times, you’ll be pushing water deeper and deeper to the roots, which is really ideal.”

And for best results, she said, water in the early morning, when temperatures are lower and less water is lost to evaporation.

That’s just one of the simple tips from Texas Water Smart that can sharply reduce water use. And this year, they might be especially timely.

Another goal is to reduce water usage by 10 percent, “an uphill battle,” according to water district spokeswoman Denise Hickey, “so we’ve got to raise awareness.”

But it’s doable, said Mike Rickman, deputy director of the North Texas district. In June 2012, water customers cut consumption by exactly 10 percent in the face of dry weather and tighter water supplies.

“And this goes back a ways, back to ’05 and ’06, when we were going through the same things [with drought] and we were able to reduce usage by 100 to 150 million gallons a day,” Rickman said.

On its busiest day, he said, the district pumped a total of 582 million gallons.

Nurseries and big-box stores such as Home Depot play a key role in conservation, Hickey said, “encouraging consumers to be more water-efficient and to be more conscious of how they use water.”

Joey Constantino, manager of the Home Depot store at Forest and Josey lanes in Dallas, said that once customers understand how easy it can be to cut water use — and how that can reduce their bills — it’s easy to change old habits.

During the warmest months, outdoor watering is a major contributor to overall water use, Constantino said, so adjusting sprinkler use, making sure hoses and faucets don’t leak and applying mulch to plant beds can make a big difference.

But indoor water use is always with us, with showers, industrial washing machine and toilets making up about 70 percent of residential consumption each year, Constantino said.

“A leaky toilet can waste 200 gallons of water a day, and some old toilets use up to 7 gallons a flush,” he said. “And a high-efficiency washing machine will pay for itself in water savings.”