No lawn watering restrictions for Windsor, but just because you can, should you?

While residents in Windsor, LaSalle and Tecumseh can freely blast their sprinklers whenever they please, people living in Chatham-Kent and some parts of Essex County have to limit their water usage.

Chatham-Kent imposed restrictions on lawn watering on Monday, only allowing residents to water their grass every other day, depending on their address.

The same rules apply for customers of the Union Water Supply System, which serves parts of Kingsville, Leamington, Essex and Lakeshore. imposes lawn watering restrictions annually, and notes that this year "the UWSS system has already experienced some days where water demand was greater than treatment plant output capacity." Customers are urged to do any watering between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m. or between 6 p.m. and midnight, when there is less demand on the system.

Garry Rossi, the vice-president of water operations for Enwin Utilities, said Windsor has not seen water restrictions since the A.H. Weeks Water Treatment Plant opened in 1994. It effectively doubled the city's capacity to treat water. Now, the system typically operates at 35 to 40 per cent of its capacity.

"We do have the ability to deal with any increased demand," Rossi said. "Using a little more water doesn't necessarily mean we're going to drain the Great Lakes."

Enwin gets its water supply from the Detroit River, as does the Town of Amherstburg. Other water systems in Essex County tap into Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair.

Rossi adds that even with lawn watering that goes on in the summer, the amount of water being used has declined over the past decade.

"Since 2007 really, we have seen a severe reduction in water consumption in the city. A lot of it has to do, obviously, with water conservation," he said, pointing to more efficient toilets, shower heads and appliances.

Sandy MacDonald, a professor in the landscape horticulture department at St. Clair College, said he hasn't seen a "big backtrack" in people watering their lawns in Windsor, but did note that "in other areas of the world where drought is much more a problem, it's almost become a status symbol to have your lawn turn brown in the summer."

"It shows that you're ecologically aware and ecologically conscious, and if you had a bright green lawn, in some cases, those people might think that you actually were being wasteful with water," he said.

MacDonald said Windsor hasn't gotten to that point because the city has a great water supply and no water restrictions.

"There's actually a lot of controversy whether we even should be watering lawns at all. Some people disagree with the process entirely," he said. "Basically, we're using good potable water to irrigate a lawn, when in reality, we should be reserving that water for home use."

The sentiment is echoed by Katie Stammler, the Water Quality Scientist and Source Water Protection Project Manager with the Essex Region Conservation Authority.

"Even though we're surrounded by water, that water still has to be treated, so it doesn't mean that there is a ton of it," she said, "And it just evaporates off your lawn anyway."

She also said if you've been using fertilizers or pesticides and you water it, "you're going to be just washing that right off and that goes out into our entire ecosystem. So we have to consider that as well."

While Stammler and MacDonald argue the more environmentally conscious thing to do is not to water your lawn at all, MacDonald said there are arguments that a healthy lawn can help reduce the amount of insects and diseases.

"The healthy growing turf also can actually actively be consuming more carbon dioxide and can actively collect more dust and more residues," he said. "So, it is actually a living organism, that whole turf area, and when it's dormant, it's not doing that."

Tips on watering grass

When it comes to the health of your grass, MacDonald said it's not about how frequently people water it, but how deep the water goes.

"One of the key points I guess that a lot of people do miss, they kind of think that watering every day might be sort of the best way. However, we want good deep roots that will reach for water deep in the soil," he said.

"If we water very lightly and very frequently, we can actually encourage shallow roots, and that actually is not beneficial to the turf grass."

MacDonald said it's best to water your lawn two to three times a week, adding that grasses need at least one to two inches of water each week, which can be measured using an official rain gauge or a tuna can.