Amidst new water restrictions, a number of Decrease Mainland municipalities are encouraging residents to flaunt their dehydrated lawns with satisfaction.
Municipalities together with Port Coquitlam, Abbotsford, Mission and Chilliwack are asking residents to submit photographs of their well-maintained, albeit brown lawns to win a prize.
“We’re having a bit little bit of enjoyable with it,” stated Dave Kidd, supervisor of public works for the Metropolis of Port Coquitlam.
Metro Vancouver entered Stage 2 water restrictions final week amid drought circumstances, which means residents are banned from garden watering.
Fines for violating water restrictions can attain as much as $500, relying on the municipality.
Kidd says the competition is the town’s inventive approach of elevating consciousness on the restrictions and serving to residents settle for a brand new actuality.
Town usually sees a 50 per cent improve in water consumption round this time of 12 months, principally attributable to garden watering, in response to Kidd.
“It’s a little bit of a shift to embrace the golden-brown garden,” he stated.
Prizes for the competition embrace three $100 reward playing cards to a neighborhood enterprise or a $150 reward card for a block get together in your neighborhood.
Residents can submit their photographs on-line or publish them to social media and tag the Metropolis of Port Coquitlam.
Abbotsford, Mission, and Chilliwack are holding an analogous contest, providing winners between $50 and $150 off their water utility invoice, or the identical quantities in reward playing cards.
Karin England, panorama architect with Metro Vancouver regional parks, says holding lawns inexperienced in the summertime might be extra wasteful than folks assume.
“I don’t know if everybody realizes that the water we use to water our lawns is our ingesting water,” England stated on CBC’s B.C. In the present day.
Whereas lawns might be helpful, for instance by offering leisure house, England says folks ought to assess whether or not they’re really utilizing their garden.
“Lawns usually are not a pure system, they’re a human-invented factor,” stated England.
“It’s not as if we’re giving up one thing that we completely must have in our lives.”
England suggests those that like having a inexperienced garden contemplate switching to options — like a clover garden — that require much less water than grass.