Athens has been named the most Water Wise city in its category in the Wyland National Mayor's Challenge for Water Conservation. Annual mayor's challenge. Laurie Lofton, Program Specialist ACC's Water Conservation Office says those taking part went to www.mywaterpledge.com to make their conservation commitment.
"You were given a list of options of way you would become more water efficient, and you would select which one you were willing to do," Lofton said. "We had over 8,000 pledges here in Athens, to cut water use by 42.3 million gallons."
While many chose more typical, but efficient, methods to conserve water, like vowing to turn off the taps when brushing teeth, or taking shorter showers, some of the options were not so obvious.
"Turning off your lights, because there's a connection between water use and energy use. They both rely on each other so by turning off the lights you're saving water; by saving water you're also saving electricity."
Athens has participated for the last three years and placed in the top five, but this was the first win for the Classic City. Categories ranged from cities with as few as 5,000 residents to those with over 600,000. Athens won in the category for cities with populations from 100,000 to 299,999.
The list of options was extensive.
"Other items that it asked you to do was to recycle old clothing, that's an example of our indirect water use that we don't think about," according to Lofton. "It requires water to manufacture and produce our clothing from the basic of growing a cotton crop to make the material, to the process of shipping it to a store, and the packing of anything involved with it."
Other winners include Laguna Beach, CA; Flagstaff, AZ; Aurora, CO, and Dallas, TX.
