City of College Station Blog

By Colin Killian, Public Communications Director

In this week’s episode of “What’s Up, College Station?” Public Communications’ Bobbie Lehrmann and Water Resource Coordinator Jennifer Nations discuss Fix a Leak Week, new water-related rebates for homeowners, the Go N Grow Garden, and other water conservation efforts that make a difference.

The “What’s Up, College Station?” podcast is available weekly via Podbean, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple, and Amazon/Audible. Please subscribe, rate, and recommend!

If you have a suggestion for a future topic or interview, email me at ckillian@cstx.gov. 

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TRANSCRIPT

Bobbie Lehrmann:

What’s up College Station? I’m Bobbi Lehrmann. I’m here in studio today with Jennifer Nations, our water chick. What’s going on in your world?

Jennifer Nations:

Yeah, lots of water things happening. As we move into March, we have Fix a Leak Week that will be March 17th through the 23rd. And it’s a week of just water conservation awareness promoted by the EPA WaterSense program every year. And the theme is leaks can run but they can’t hide.

And so I’ve got some information out about just ways to check, twist, replace. Check your water meter, check your faucets, your shower heads, your hose bibs for leaks. Twist on a faucet aerator, or twist the connections to fix the leaks. And then if you need to replace your appliances, go ahead and replace them with something that’s WaterSense certified. So that’s three easy steps to reduce your water use there.

Bobbie Lehrmann:

Awesome. Important information there and I’m sure going into this hotter season, important things to know as well.

Jennifer Nations:

Right. And we’ve got our Rooted In Garden in a Box promotion happening right now. People can pre-order at rootedin.com/shop. And there’s two options there to pick from. You can get a native box or a herb garden. And each box is $85 plus tax. You need to pre-order, and then you pick up on Saturday, April 5th at the Gary Halter Nature Center at Lake Creek Park. Between 9 a.m. and noon.

Bobbie Lehrmann:

Okay. And have you yourself participated in this before?

Jennifer Nations:

I have.

Bobbie Lehrmann:

Can you tell us like how it’s turned out or where the plant is today?

Jennifer Nations:

Yeah, I got one a couple of years ago and it’s in my front yard and it has survived. And that bed just gets drip irrigation. And then a little bit of overspray from one of my other irrigation zones, but has mostly survived on, I haven’t really needed to water it that much. And it thrives. It brings butterflies. And these kits have … They’re color-coded and numbered and so you get a pre-determined, a pre-designed planting plan. And it’s all color-coded, so it’ll tell you to put the red number five plant here and the purple number four plant over there so they know how it’s going to turn out. And you get a planting and maintenance guide emailed to you also.

Bobbie Lehrmann:

And it sounds like a great activity even for the kids to get involved as well to help educate them on how things grow and how you need to plant them. So yeah, I encourage people to get involved in that.

Jennifer Nations:

Yeah, and some of the plants have been planted at Lick Creek Park also. So if people want to see what’s it going to look like when it’s full-grown, there’s a large bed outside the classroom area there that has that and it’s thriving.

Bobbie Lehrmann:

Great. And what else is going on?

Jennifer Nations:

Let’s see, we’ve got, March 22nd is World Water Day, so that you’ll probably see some stuff online and just that’s a day, it’s a international day to just raise awareness about water. I’ve got funding for rebates. So people have been asking for those for a long time. So when I do irrigation checkups, and that’s another thing I can talk about, I will often see really old irrigation controllers that are hard to program or people don’t quite understand how to program them.

So if they want to upgrade their controller to a WaterSense certified controller, there will be rebates for that. And the WaterSense certified means that it’s been independently third-party verified to be more efficient than its conventional counterpart. So there’s WaterSense labels for toilets, faucet aerators, shower heads, irrigation controllers, soil moisture meters, rain sensors, that kind of thing. So we have some rebates for that.

And working on expanding the rainwater harvesting rebate as well. We had rebates for that for a number of years and then the funding went away and now it’s been restored because we do need to incentivize conservation as much as we can.

Bobbie Lehrmann:

Right. And how can people learn more about these rebates?

Jennifer Nations:

They can go onto our website and we’ll have more information coming on that. But yeah, learn more about the rebates there and they can go to the EPA WaterSense website also. And there’s a whole lot of information there about the smart irrigation controllers, the pressure regulating sprinkler bodies. Those are pretty cool. The sprinkler body is the part that the nozzle pops out of and sprays the water. So we have high water pressure in this area.

And if a sprinkler is installed and it has excess water pressure, it’ll still run, but they have a manufacturer specification of water pressure that they’re supposed to run into, that’s when you see the fogging and the misting and it’ll actually put out more water than it’s designed to. But if you put in these pressure regulated sprinkler bodies, it regulates the water pressure so that it’s operating within the manufacturer’s specifications. So instead of seeing the fog and the misting, you get the big drops. And that’s much more efficient for water use. The plants, the water actually gets on the plants, which is awesome. And you end up saving water. So look for incentives on that.

And then the smart controllers, those are usually weather-based, so they’ll be tied to or have some functionality to get programming from a weather station or it’ll operate based on weather recommendations.

Bobbie Lehrmann:

And water conservation is so important right now. It’s such an important resource for our community. So we love to learn all these tips and tricks and I’m sure people are going to be very interested in learning more information as we get this information pushed out on our website.

Jennifer Nations:

Yes. And if people have questions about their irrigation system, they can contact me for a landscape irrigation checkup. Or if you have a homeowner association that is having a meeting coming up or a garden club or something, I go out and speak to those organizations. I love to share my knowledge about irrigation and water conservation.

Bobbie Lehrmann:

You’re such a wealth of knowledge, so we appreciate you being in here today. And that’s what’s up.

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