BATON ROUGE, LA – Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome announced today Baton Rouge’s participation in the 10th Annual Wyland National Mayor’s Challenge for Water Conservation.
Through the annual challenge, Mayor Broome is joining with mayors and communities throughout the U.S. to raise awareness and make commitments to use water more efficiently, reduce pollution, and conserve energy. In 2018, Baton Rouge was named the “Most Water Wise City” in the nation, with local residents committing to reduce their water use by 32.7 million gallons through more than 7,000 pledges.
“I’m proud to again participate in the National Mayor’s Challenge for Water Conservation and join with our residents to make a long-term commitment to how we manage and use our precious water resources as efficiently and wisely as possible,” said Mayor Broome. “I’m asking all of our residents to take the short online pledge to conserve water and help demonstrate to the rest of the country how serious we are in Baton Rouge when it comes to preserving and sustaining our most valuable natural resources.”
Last year, residents from more than 2,000 cities pledged to reduce their annual consumption of freshwater by more than 1 billion gallons, reduce waste sent to landfills by 29 million pounds, and prevent hundreds of thousands of pounds of hazardous waste from entering their natural environments.
Mayor Broome is extending a special challenge to East Baton Rouge Parish teachers and students. Coordinated through her Department of Environmental Services, local schools will compete against one another to take the water conservation pledge. The school with the greatest percentage of its student population to take the pledge will be announced as the competition winner.
For more information on the competition and details on how teachers and their schools can participate, visit brla.gov/mayorschallenge or contact Michael Lowe with the Department of Environmental Services at mlowe@brla.gov or (225) 389-3240.
To take the water conservation pledge, visit mywaterpledge.com.