Don Smith and Jan Famestad want to make sure you're watering your lawn and not the sidewalk.
The two work for Folsom's Water Management program, and part of their day involves making house calls on folks around the city who've asked for help reducing their water usage.
"We do 20 to 25 house calls a week," Famestad said as she and Smith headed to a residence on Hillswick Circle.
"They are the best water conservation effort," Smith said of the program, which has existed since 2000.
Another inspector patrols Folsom looking for water waste, Smith said. A broken sprinkler spraying down the street or a leaky hose might get you a notice on your door, like one Ron Stoddard received from the city.
"They came and put something on my door to talk about excess water runoff," he said, as Smith and Famestad looked over his home's irrigation system.
Famestad came equipped with a goodie bag full of low-flow showerheads and sprayers for the garden hose. She explained how each device worked before she reset Stoddard's sprinkler timer to use less water but do a better job of irrigating the lawn.
Smith, a professional landscaper for 20 years before he took this job in 2003, said Folsom's rocky soil and hilly terrain mean that most sprinklers completely soak the top-soil in just a few minutes before the water starts running off into the street.
"It just picks up whatever's in the lawn and sends it out to the river (via the storm drain)," he said.
In Folsom, which operates its own water company, about 60 percent of all water used goes to landscaping, Smith said.
"About one half of that is wasted," he said, pointing to a steady stream of water running down Hillswick Circle as sprinklers raged up and down the street in the early morning hours. "So about 25 to 30 percent of all the water we produce is just hitting the gutters."
For more information, or to schedule a free visit by Folsom's Water Management Program, call (916) 355-7252.
Call The Bee's Stan Oklobdzija, (916) 608-7453.
