Water Conservation Update (June 1 2025)

A lot of progress has been made in the Water Conservation area!  Beginning in April, you maybe saw very early in the morning a group of residents in raingear planting flags in the grass around our building. The volunteers identified and counted all sprinkler heads around buildings 217/218 and in the median between Yale and Linvale Place with the help of HG Grounds & Landscaping. The same was done around buildings 223/224 and the area around the South Townhomes, as well as land along the Spillway fence, the parking/staging area across building 216 on E Marina Drive and the land around the Community Gardens. This was necessary to be able to calculate the costs of replacing all sprinkler heads and controllers with “smarter” and more water efficient heads, controllers and valves. The goal is to significantly reduce the water usage for irrigation and realize cost savings by lowering our water bill.

The Garden Committee of our building and some residents of building 217 also finished exciting new landscaping plans. This will be another part of the water conservation plan and will help reduce water usage and will realize even more cost savings. The new landscaping plan will also greatly improve the appearance of landscaping around our building with beautiful plants, flowers, brushes and grass (all selected based on their drought resistant characteristics) and even some pathways. Overall, this new landscaping design will make Heather Gardens look better and be more sustainable, which is in line with expectations and desires of current and especially future residents of Heather Gardens. All this will increase the value of our property. Soon, the landscape plan will be presented to our building 218 residents and to the Heather Gardens board for consideration and approval.

The Toilet Survey initiative also made a lot of progress in our building. In the coming weeks there will be a last push to get all forms back from the residents in our building. The goal of this survey is only to find out how many inefficient toilets we have in our building and to detect and fix slowly leaking toilets.