A resident’s guide to becoming water wise.
The Joy of Water is our guide full of simple tips to help you manage water near your home. Inspired by cookbooks, with their step-by-step instructions for preparing meals at home, this guide lays out a variety of “recipes” you can use on your property to reduce water pollution and small-scale flooding. It’s designed to allow everyone to understand steps you can personally take to improve water management in your neighborhood.
The water management projects detailed here have been tested to ensure that the installation and maintenance requirements can be completed by a committed homeowner in an afternoon or over a weekend. These are small-scale measures that you can install and maintain on your own. However, each individual has different abilities, resources, and levels of experience; you may feel the need to enlist help or hire professionals to perform the selection, design, and/or installation.
This guide provides a variety of options, depending on time, re- sources, and property conditions. Your steps towards becoming “water wise” include:
Getting Started: Begin by understanding how water flows on your property, how this water connects with the larger drainage system, and potential sources of pollution.
Home Projects: Ranging from simple downspout disconnections to rain gardens, all of which can help slow, hold, and allow water to infiltrate into the ground.
Caring for Your Community: Additional measures you can take, including expanding efforts in your neighborhood and becoming a Water Wise champion for better water management practices across the city.
Together, all of these measures will help us become more aware of the value of water and the role we each play in making sure our water is clean and safe!
Click here to download your own copy.
A glimpse into the handbook...
Check out the pages below to get a feel for what the guide looks like.
Download your free copy in the link above.
Use it for yourself, hand out to others, or print it out for workshops! Just be sure to credit us so that people know where to find more free resources — and if you can, consider donating to our work.
