Rich Silverman has put his money where his mouth is when it comes to saving water.

The Manteca City Councilman – who has helped oversee a cutback of just over 37 percent of the city’s municipal water supply when compared to 2014 – just recently had a landscaping firm remove more than 600 square-feet of grass from his Woodward Park home and replace it with a drought-resistant rock and bark setup that he believes will cut his own water bill by nearly 40 percent.

And he hopes the move will show that some of Manteca’s leaders are doing their own part when it comes to navigating the most severe drought that California has seen in nearly four decades.

“I never like to refer to myself as a politician, and I think that in order to be able to do that you have to ‘walk the talk,’” Silverman said. “I really did this because it was the right thing to do, but if it can get one person to consider doing the same then it was money well spent.”

Just last week the landscape firm – spearheaded by Mark from Landscape Solutions – finished the large job of removing the grass and replacing it with drought-resistant plants, rock, boulders and bark. Instead of shrub sprinklers delivering water crudely, each plant is set up on a drip irrigation system that will greatly cut down overall consumption, and a wide swatch of Silverman’s street-facing sideyard, which previously housed grass and water-hungry shrubs, has been replaced with rock right up to the sidewalk.

Silverman said that the undertaking was part of a general sense of doing what was needed at the time – the right thing, he says – rather than a “look at me” approach to delivering a message.

Part of an overarching desire to help educate the public on the city’s municipal water laws, Silverman says that he sees plenty of his neighbors that have either ignored water restriction rules or simply haven’t paid close enough attention to know when the guidelines actually went into effect.

“Sometimes I’ll walk down and talk to them about what’s going on, and a lot of times they don’t know,” Silverman said. “A big part of reaching the reduction that we have is attributed to education, and you see a lot more people starting to do things like this.

“I give all of the credit and the kudos to the people of Manteca for helping us reach our goal and continuing that sacrifice as we get into the hottest part of the year. I’m still waiting to see what the numbers for June were because it’s been warm this last month and we’re hitting the stretch where it will be hot all of the time. It’s important to stay on top of these sorts of things.”