Colorado's DCWRA awarded grant for water and money saving sprinkler retrofits in 2011

Sept. 20, 2010 - PRLog -- CASTLE ROCK - Douglas County Water Resource Authority (DCWRA) has just been awarded a grant for $250,000 by the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) to retrofit 1,000 residential yards with more efficient rotary sprinkler nozzles over the summer of 2011.  The program will accomplish three major positives for Douglas County: saving water, saving homeowners money and creating dozens of new summer jobs for teenagers.

Earlier this summer, DCWRA and its partners submitted the grant request to the Metro Basin Roundtable, an organization created by the Colorado General Assembly to bring together competing water interests in an effort to work toward common solutions. The Metro Basin Roundtable approved the grant application and sent it to the CWCB, where staff reviewed the application and gave it full support. Based on staff recommendation, the CWC Board, whose members are all appointed by the Governor of Colorado, voted to approve the grant at its September Board meeting in Grand Junction on September 15, 2010.

The sprinkler retrofit program will create several dozens of summer jobs for Douglas County high school teens to execute the retrofits.  The teens will work in small groups with a supervisor to replace existing, inefficient sprinkler heads with new rotary sprinkler nozzles. The teams will also audit their results and help the homeowners adjust their sprinkler system clocks, which will reduce water usage but actually increase watering efficiency with the new heads.

In anticipation of earning the CWCB grant, a pilot program of retrofitting 50 yards is currently underway. With the success and lessons learned from the 2010 pilot program, the 2011 program will take off with a running start.  Partners on the 2010 pilot project include the Douglas County School District, Arapahoe Douglas Works!, the Center for Resource Conservation, and DCWRA.  DCWRA members participating in the pilot project include Town of Castle Rock, City of Lone Tree, Castle Pines Metro District, and Castle Pines North Metro District.

“The pilot program has gone very well from all aspects and we look forward to ratcheting up our efforts in 2011 thanks to this grant,” said DCWRA Executive Director Mark Shively. “We are excited about this direction and the support. Success breeds success and this program can continue to grow and really have an impact on our water future.”

The new rotary sprinkler nozzles the teams install are 30 percent more efficient that current spray designs, and that means a good deal of water demand can be reduced through these retrofits.  Traditional designs are prone to water waste because of wind and evaporation impacting the misting spray.  Rotary nozzles combat this loss and do a better job of irrigating lawns by shooting streams of water that are heavier and not as susceptible to these other problems.  The great benefit to homeowners is not only are they saving water, but by using the rotary nozzles, they can also reduce their water bills by about 15 percent!

For do-it-yourselfers who can’t wait to participate in the retrofit project, the new rotary sprinkler nozzles are available at most local retailers – homeowners just need to ask for money and water saving “rotary sprinkler nozzles”.  For more information, please check out: http://www.dcwater.org/pages/sprinklers/sprinklers.html.  Water slow, it’s your dough!

ABOUT THE DCWRA (http://www.DCWater.org):
The DCWRA is a nonprofit organization made up of 19 members who represent the regional collection of municipalities, water providers and County government that is dedicated to water resource conservation, education, public policy initiatives and the creation of a forum for the discussion of issues related to water. Members of the DCWRA recognize that outdoor water use constitutes a sizable percentage of the County's overall water use – more than 40 percent – and therefore recognize that the management of our citizen's outdoor water use is one of the most important tools that we have to manage water demand in the future.