Facelift?

FACELIFT?
LB Water awarding brand new, water conserving, beautiful front yards! FREE
LONG BEACH, CA – Today, the Long Beach Water Department has announced the kick-off of a citywide opportunity drawing where Long Beach residents may win a beautiful, water-efficient, front yard make-over, each valued at up to $10,000. These new landscapes will be professionally designed, installed, and paid for by the Long Beach Water Department, as part of the agency’s progressive conservation communications initiative. The drawing, design and installation of these landscapes will be filmed and televised. Residents may enter the drawing by visiting, www.lbwater.org.
The drawing, which will create nine unique, water-efficient demonstration landscapes throughout the City, will be used as a platform to raise the awareness of wasteful outdoor watering practices, expose people to the benefits of water efficient landscaping, and inspire people to permanently change their lifestyle so that inefficient and wasteful uses of water are no longer tolerated.
Residents of Long Beach are being invited to simply enter their name and address to win. The opportunity drawing will conclude on January 9, 2009 (last day to enter). Winners will be selected at random by each member of the Long Beach City Council at a date and time yet to be determined, in the weeks following the conclusion of the drawing. There will be one winning home in each of the City’s nine Council Districts.
According to Matt Lyons, Director of Conservation and Planning for the Long Beach Water Department, "southern California’s drinking water supplies have been permanently reduced over the last few years. We must lower our demand down to where it's roughly equal to our supply. One of the best ways to do this is by reducing our landscape irrigation." In southern California, landscape typically consumes huge amounts of water: roughly half the water used in the average home goes to landscape. "There’s a lot of room for improvement on how southern Californian’s irrigate their yards," added Lyon’s.
"To give people an idea on the amount of water we can save by changing our approach to landscape and outdoor irrigation, you need only look at the water saved by Long Beach residents this year," stated John Allen, President of the Board of Water Commissioners. "We’ve set record 10-year lows for water consumption in eight of the last eleven months, and we’ll set a new 10-year record low for the year. These records can be attributed to changes in attitudes and behavior in water use outside the home. This is obviously a focus we would like to sustain, for the long-term."
The Long Beach Board of Water Commissioners recently announced that August 2008 was the eighth record setting month for low water consumption this year. August water demand was 19 percent below the 10-year average water demand; it was over 18 percent below August 2007. Long Beach water demand for fiscal year 2008 is currently tracking at 9 percent below the 10-year average for annual water use.
On September 13, 2007, the Long Beach Board of Water Commissioners issued a Declaration of Imminent Water Supply Shortage and activated the City’s Emergency Water Supply Shortage Plan. As a result, the Board issued mandatory prohibitions on certain outdoor uses of water. The Declaration was necessitated by the profound impact of permanent reductions to imported water deliveries into southern California; the dramatic reductions in water storage levels in key reservoirs in northern California; and climate conditions resulting in drought.
"Through the Opportunity Drawing we hope to raise awareness of an important and exciting new concept in landscape, Beautiful Long Beach Landscape, and most importantly, support and complement our on-going efforts to re-engineer the way we think about and use water," according to Matt Lyons,
The innovation of the colorful Beautiful Long Beach Landscape comes from the fact that it reduces landscape water needs by 80 percent or more while at the same time reduces the harmful impact urban water run-off has on our coastal marine habitat, beautifies our neighborhoods, reduces yard maintenance, and improves our quality of life.
Details on the drawing can be found at www.lbwater.org, or residents may call (562) 570-2300.
The Long Beach Water Department is an urban, southern California, retail water supply agency and the standard in water conservation and environmental stewardship.