Last year's upsurge in new home construction has caused Glendale, Scottsdale, Phoenix, and Peoria to provide new home buyers with more information on xeriscapes before they buy a home and the yard is planted with turf by default. In addition, Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Tempe are developing xeriscape demonstration gardens. Raising the visibility of conservation is another priority, with greater emphasis on videos, public service announcements, and school programs. Mesa found an innovative and inexpensive way to spread the conservation message, by printing it on Pogs. These changes reflect the maturation of conservation programs, which generally begin by focussing on existing residential water uses, and rely heavily on audits and distribution of leak detection kits and low-flow devices.
Programs targeting multi-family units and residential landscaping often follow.
Eventually, the focus widens, as conservation managers grapple with the more varied commercial and industrial uses of water, and attempt to learn what assistance these customers need to reduce water consumption. Many programs, including those in Tempe, Chandler and Mesa, have increased staff and funding, although in the case of Mesa, responsibilities also have been expanded to include natural gas conservation efforts. Scottsdale's budget is not significantly changed. The reduced conservation budget mostly reflects the transfer of staff responsible for rate setting from the water department to the city's finance department. Large cuts are being experienced by the state's oldest conservation program, Tucson's.