Baxley-Gores: Water conservation needs to be a priority in Queen Creek

As an Arizona native, I recognize the importance of water conservation in our great state.  In our household, we make every attempt to conserve water as much as possible and where practical. Cherie Baxley-Gores Unfortunately, I live in a neighborhood here in Queen Creek, that has strict HOA guidelines that actually “prohibits” desert- or zero-scape yards.  We are also required to install winter grass every year.  This is where our problem begins. A sprinkler valve in our front yard apparently was stuck open, which means our water ran continuously in that section for 10 days.  Since we commute to Phoenix for work, we leave early, and arrive after dark and didn’t realize the sprinkler never stopped (this was also early in the process when watering occurs every four hours). You can imagine our shock (horror) when we received the bill.  Not to mention how immensely bad we felt for the water waste.  We worked with the Town of Queen Creek to resolve (they were fantastic by the way.) However, it highlights the fact that we as a town do not have any kind of “early warning” system that alerts the utility and/or water conservation departments that something may be amiss, much less real-time notification to the consumer. Even the online utility bill and history are not granular or real time in a way that may have alerted us.  I would love to see this changed in the future, especially as water conservation is so important to our town.  Hopefully, this is something planned in our town's future. We are definitely humbled by this experience (and a little broke) but do appreciate how the town worked with us once it was discovered. Cherie Baxley-Gores Queen Creek