GILBERT, Ariz. — A Gilbert community says major conservation efforts are now helping them save more than 10 million gallons of water every year. While there were up-front costs associated with the conservation effort, it is also making a significant cut to the community's water bill.
Trilogy at Power Ranch, a community of more than 2,000 homes, is officially recognized as “Water Wise” by the Town of Gilbert.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty on the Colorado River,” Jeremiah Churchill with the Town of Gilbert said. “We are trying to be prepared for the reduction of water.”
Gilbert’s Water Wise program encourages large landscape water users to operate within a water budget based on the size and type of landscaping on their property.
“We’re trying to get people to understand the concept of a water budget and get communities to meet that budget,” Churchill said.
The conservation efforts at Trilogy can be seen throughout the community.
Trilogy has worked with AAA Landscape to remove more than 60,000 square feet of turf, replacing some of that grass with pavers and other lower-water-use landscaping.
“This was all grass before,” Chad Dane said. “They made the decision to take out the grass and put in pavers.”
Where grass remains, Trilogy has installed smart irrigation systems that allow crews to remotely control water use and closely track how much water is being used throughout the property.
“We GPS the location of every irrigation asset, valves, backflows, meters, and set up systems that we can count on that track every gallon of water used on the property,” Dane said.
Those changes are reducing the community water bill alongside the water savings.
“We’ve managed to save 20 million gallons here at Trilogy, and that has translated into $164,000 of savings for the community,” said Stephen Mobley with AAA Landscape.
Trilogy also has several water features, but the Town of Gilbert says the fountains comply with its requirements.
The water is recirculated rather than continuously replaced, and Gilbert limits the height of fountain spray to reduce the amount of water lost to evaporation.
“And we also limit the height of the spray to limit evaporation,” Churchill said.
Even with those measures, Trilogy says it is working on plans to remove both a fountain and the water feature at the community entrance as it looks for additional ways to conserve.
For community leaders, the goal is to celebrate the savings they are seeing today while preparing for a future in which Arizona's water supplies could face greater pressure.
“Our goal is to help with the sustainable water resource; we know that there’s a drought,” said Michele Ray-Brethower with Trilogy at Power Ranch. “We’re trying to maintain and retain that water for our future, not just now.”
