BEND, OR -- After a long, rough winter, it’s hard to believe irrigation season is already here. The city of Bend released a YouTube video, this week, encouraging residents and businesses to be aware that water conservation is still important, despite this spring’s healthy snow pack and seemingly unending water supply.

"This time of year, the city’s really getting ready for an uptick in water use and water demands for the growing season, primarily the result of landscape irrigation," says Mike Buettner, Bend’s Water Conservation Program Manager. "We’re working with contractors in a few different ways. One, we’re partnering with the Oregon Landscaping Contractors Association to really promote continuing education opportunities geared towards low water and native landscapes, and drip irrigation." In the video, Buettner highlights the landscaping project along Columbia Street, near Colorado and Simpson, "There, we have an older landscape and we’ve been working with the contractor, there, to track water use. They’re transforming that landscape into a low-water alternative, with drip irrigation and desert adaptive plant material. We’re really encouraged to see this sort of development happening out there."

Buettner also asks property owners to follow irrigation rules: even-numbered addresses water on even days, and odd-numbered addresses water on odd days. And, there’s no irrigating between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.