PWP Urges Use of Efficient Garden Watering Systems

With officials saying that Pasadena faces a serious water shortage, conservation programs manager for Pasadena Water and Power (PWP) Nancy Long encouraged gardeners and home owners to install smart and efficient watering systems to ensure water conservation at a workshop on Saturday.

During the Water-Smart Gardening Workshop, one of the series of PWP Lawn & Garden workshops held at the Salvation Army Church, Long said the improper way of watering gardens and landscapes has contributed a lot to water wastage in the face of an ongoing water shortage in Pasadena.

“People often think, particularly during the summer, that you need to water everyday and that’s just absolutely not true,” said Long during the three-hour workshop attended by at least 35 PWP customers.

Long said it only requires three days a week of watering if it is done correctly and deeply and if the water goes into the plants and not down the sidewalk. She said this requires paying attention to the existing irrigation system and fixing leaks to make sure that water gets into the plants and not on the streets.

The PWP Lawn & Garden Workshops follow a curriculum developed specifically for Pasadena and aim to offer a tool to water users to not only use water to its best efficiency but also to encourage them with information on how to have healthy gardens.

“We are facing a serious water shortage and we are going to ask our customers to water less frequently and so in doing that we want to make certain that they are putting in appropriate plants for their gardens,” Long said.

Long said PWP has been offering landscaping classes for the past 10 years, resulting to more people moving away from traditional landscaping and gardening and going to a new style that use water at least twice lesser than the old way.

The next class, Long said, is the efficient irrigation workshop that specifically speaks to how much water does landscaping really need to stay healthy.

“Most of our customers have emotional and financial investments in their landscaping and we want to nurture that and again really encourage them to use the water in their landscaping to its highest efficiency,” she said.

PWP has long been a supporter of water conservation and has offered customers a host of conservation resources as well as rebate programs. It has asked the City Council to declare that a water shortage exists and implement measures to conserve water.

On April this year, the City Council members unanimously approved water conservation, waste-prohibition and shortage plans that encourage PWP customers to use less water by making it much more expensive to waste.