Campaign to save water gets $15,000
A regional environmental organization's campaign to save water by regulating landscaping practices has received a $15,000 boost from state motorists' purchases of specialty environmental license plates.
The grant from the Massachusetts Environmental Trust to the North and South Rivers Watershed Association will help fund the environmental organization's work with area communities to develop a model water-saving bylaw.
The bylaw would allow municipalities to regulate landscaping practices to better conserve and protect water resources, according to Wendy Garpow, director of community programs for the watershed association.
Massachusetts Environmental Trust's specialty license plates exclusively fund environmental initiatives, according to Robbin Peach, the trust's executive director. When state drivers purchase a whale plate -- a license plate with a picture of the fluke of a breaching whale -- or other plates produced by the trust, money goes into a fund that the trust distributes as grants to worthy environmental projects.
Car owners purchase the specialty plates from the Registry of Motor Vehicles, which passes half the cost onto the trust to fund water-focused environmental education and protection programs. Peach said the trust will provide nearly $1 million in grants to more than 40 organizations this year.
Samantha Woods, the watershed association's executive director, said the trust's grant will help protect the North and South river watersheds by ''promoting the efficient use of water, reducing polluted runoff, and establishing a structure for the designing, installing, and maintaining of watershed-friendly landscapes across the region."
The watershed association's model bylaw project is part of a larger effort, known as the Greenscapes program, aimed at teaching residents how to landscape without using excess water and chemicals.
Last year, the Norwell-based watershed association mailed information packages to 70,000 households in 11 communities that promoted sound watering and lawn-cutting practices and offered alternatives to conventional lawn grasses and fertilizers that are high consumers of water.
The trust's $15,000 grant will pay for legal advice and other staff costs in designing a water-saving bylaw that towns and cities can either adopt in whole or part.
Garpow said the model bylaw could propose a restriction on how much water private irrigation wells would be permitted to pump from the ground, regulate how much topsoil developers must leave behind when new houses are built, limit the percentage of lots developers would be permitted to cover with impervious material, and cap how much lawn area they are able to design into large lots.
Current practices in all these areas waste water, Garpow said. Private irrigation wells compete for limited water supplies with municipal wells while following wasteful landscaping practices. Developers typically put down less than the 6 inches of topsoil needed for a healthy lawn; as a result, residents are forced to water frequently to keep their grass alive. Impervious materials -- blacktop or cement -- cause water to run off and burden storm-water systems.
The 16-page Greenscapes guide mailed to residents offered advice not only on how to water and mow lawns less frequently, but how to care for them without chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, and replace turf grass with varieties that require less water.
It also suggests natural products that will kill crabgrass and ground covers that can take the place of grassy lawns. For more information, visit the program's website, Greenscapes.org.
Robert Knox can be reached at rc.knox@gmail.com. 
