As summer draws to a close, the Okanagan Basin Water Board (OBWB) and its Okanagan WaterWise program begin to wrap up their valley-wide residential water conservation campaign “Make Water Work.”

Photo Credit: KelownaNow

As part of the annual campaign, Okanagan residents are encouraged to visit the Make Water Work website, review a list of water-saving tips and pledge to conserve.

Photo credit: KelownaNow

In addition to saving water in our valley, residents are then entered to win prizes, including a $6,000 WaterWise yard upgrade. Yesterday it was announced that Kelowna’s Laurie Weisgarber is this year’s Grand Prize winner.

“When I heard about Make Water Work, I initially checked out the website to learn more and looked at the checklist to make sure I was doing everything I could do. And then when I saw there was a prize I thought ‘Wouldn’t that be nice to have some work done.’Weisgarber explained.  

Photo credit: contributed                 

“It was a crazy summer,” notes OBWB’s Communications Director Corinne Jackson, who manages the Okanagan WaterWise program and its Make Water Work campaign.

“We’ve normally started talking about water conservation in May, as people start turning on the taps, but of course in May this year we were dealing with historic flooding,”

 Photo Credit: KelownaNow                   

Though it may have seemed odd to be promoting conservation during the flood, the wild Okanagan weather quickly turned from an abundance of water to a shortage, due to fire season.

“By the end of the summer, we have had streams drying out, there are concerns about having enough water for fish, the Okanagan broke lowest precipitation and highest temperature records, and B.C. has battled the worst fire season on record.”

Photo Credit: KelownaNow

Thanks to contest partners and Weisgarber’s conservation efforts, her home will receive $4,000 in services for a landscape audit,  as well as landscape and irrigation improvements.

Photo Credit: Contributed