LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – The City of Henderson is a year into an extensive program aimed at saving water.
Next Tuesday, the city will recognize Sun City Anthem for setting an example in that regard.
Larry Fossan, Sun City Anthem’s landscape manager, oversees the effort that cuts the neighborhood’s water usage.
“Every resident that was a little nervous about this, we actually gave landscape tours to,” Fossan told FOX5. “We had to instruct them and work with them and kind of drag them along.”
After starting this plan in 2019 at the behest of the neighborhood’s HOA, Fossan says the plan has won over the thousands of Sun City Anthem residents.
“It took a little while, but the homeowners here are on board, and they’re seeing the results,” he said proudly.
Since then, the changes Fossan has helped to implement, like installing smart toilets and low-flow showers and replacing front lawns with more desert-appropriate landscapes, have given a different look to the area.
“We don’t want to make the same mistakes we made 20 years ago,” he said.
As a result, the community’s water usage has fallen by 60% in the last five years, while sightings of wildlife accustomed to more natural landscaping have skyrocketed.
“We have thousands of butterflies now that run through our communities because we put the right plant material in,” Fossan noted.
Now, Fossan says, other communities in the valley are taking notes.
“We give them the tour,” he said of other neighborhoods’ HOAs. “We show them our grass. We show them how we’re doing this. And a lot of those places have taken that information back, and now they’re working in the same direction.”
The effort in Sun City Anthem has played into the larger goal of the City of Henderson’s H2One plan. A recent update showed that a year into the plan, Henderson’s city parks and facilities have reduced water usage by 10%. In that same time span, Henderson has reduced citywide water usage by more than 1 billion gallons over the last year—enough to fill 1,540 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
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