During the hot days of summer, Sue Breeden drives the streets of Bend, looking for residents who openly flout city regulations by watering their lawns on the wrong day or time.

It’s her job to stop them.

”I get called a water cop or the water Nazi,” said Breeden, whose official title is field customer service representative for the Bend Public Works Department.

Residents who use water from the city of Bend can irrigate between 5 and 10 a.m. and 4 and 10 p.m. People who live at an even-numbered address may only water on even days of the month. Odd addresses get odd days. No watering is allowed on the 31st.

The public works department is responsible for providing the water that keeps lawns green while ensuring the city still has enough water to fight a major fire on a moment’s notice.

It’s Breeden’s job to balance those priorities, and a dozen in between.

From mid-April to mid-October, she logs between 80 and 100 miles each day in a nondescript city-issued Nissan Pathfinder.

When she finds a lawn-watering scofflaw, she pulls over, raps on the door and informs the resident about irrigation regulations. Then she usually asks them to turn off the water.

Most people comply. But Breeden recalled how one water customer angrily ordered her off his property and refused to stop watering.

”I’ve met some very, very nice people,” she said. ”And some people can be really nasty.”

The mean folks are a rarity, Breeden said.

If the sprinkler is watering and nobody’s home, she will leave a pamphlet at the door. And sometimes, she’ll even turn off a spigot.

”We’re not trying to be very hard-line. We’re just trying to get the usage down,” she said.

In fact, hard-line may be the last way to describe Bend’s only water cop.

Neither Breeden nor the city of Bend has ever fined anyone for excessive water use.

She tends to give folks the benefit of the doubt. New residents in a developing subdivision might get a week or two grace period before hearing from her. Kids playing in a sprinkler have nothing to fear. First-time regulation-breakers get a pamphlet, a smile, and a genuine, ”Have a nice day.”

A repeat offender, on the other hand, gets a quick reminder and an invitation to shut the water off.

Wearing a bright orange construction vest and a pair of sunglasses, Breeden also checks permits on construction crews who tap into city fire hydrants. Those without a permit lose their water, and sometimes more.

”I’ll take their equipment,” she said. ”That’s a lot of money, and that’s a lot of water.”

In her three years on the job, Breeden has converted hundreds of residents to a doctrine of water conservation, which is increasingly becoming part of city policy.

During the winter, Bend sucks down about 5 million gallons of water each day. In the summer, that rate jumps to between 20 million and 25 million gallons a day. The seasonal difference is largely due to home irrigation, Breeden said.

Between 10 percent and 30 percent of the water city residents use is wasted on unnecessary irrigation, for example watering patches of dirt, sidewalks and concrete, according to Patrick Griffiths, water program specialist for the city.

Bend currently has about 28.35 million gallons on tap each day – 10.5 million from the Bridge Creek watershed and nearly 17.85 million from groundwater wells.

On a few hot days last month, consumption inched within a few million gallons of the city’s daily supply. However, storage tanks with a capacity of 26.5 million gallons can buffer high usage in the short-term. So hoses and sprinklers are unlikely to run dry anytime soon, water managers say.

Rights for another 1 million gallons a day have been secured, while the Department of Public Works is still working out mitigation plans for wells that would supply 10 million more gallons a day to accommodate future growth.

Even so, water managers ponder how long the city’s current rights to water can hold out.

They hope conservation can provide enough water for the next generation of residents. But getting users to conserve will require changing how they think about lawns and watering.

Griffiths divided Bend’s green-lawn residents into two categories: hose-draggers and timer users, or the ”set em and forget em” crowd.

”Irrigation timers are the biggest water wasters,” he said. They water when they don’t need to.

Then again, so do most Bend hose-draggers, simply because they can.

”Most people water about twice what they need,” Griffiths said.

Along with reducing the amount of water, the city hopes to change the mental image of what a healthy yard should look like, according to DPW’s Roger Prowell.

”Our biggest problem is advertising,” he said. ”Green grass has almost become a mantra.”

Education is a two-part process. First, there’s the task of retraining longtime residents to water when they need to, not when they’re allowed to.

Secondly, managers need to teach each batch of new residents about the area’s unique features. Many people come from areas where gardens are lusher, grasses are greener and water is abundant.

”We don’t want to bring Portland to Bend,” Griffiths said.

The water department is also more than halfway through putting all residents on water meters. Metered customers pay for the water they use. Flat-rate customers pay their fee for home water, plus an additional flat-rate monthly charge for irrigation during the summer.

The city plans to have the remainder of its flat-rate customers – about 4,500 homes – on meters by 2004. Commercial customers are now on meters. The city of Bend has about 16,000 customers and adds about 1,000 new customers a year.

As the city soldiers on with its effort to teach residents how to use water wisely, Sue Breeden is on the front line.

On a recent morning, she traversed neighborhoods including Ivy Creek Estates, Awbrey Butte and Awbrey Glen, the west side and an older section of homes in the shadow of Pilot Butte.

On Eighth Street, Breeden spotted a flower bed soaking up an illegal spray. She pulled into the driveway. She had been here before.

An older woman listened as Breeden told her about watering regulations.

”I forgot,” she said.

Pulling out of the driveway, Breeden said faulty memory is a common problem.

”She knew. The majority of them know,” she said. ”But they forget, and then I’m there to remind them.”

Todd Dayton can be reached at 541-383-0354 or tdayton@bendbulletin.com.