Central Otago community board members had earlier raised concerns residents might abandon irrigating grass verges when water metering was introduced in the district's towns.
Although billing for excess water use by residents has been suspended for a year in much of the district, homeowners still receive bills showing their water use.
The Central Otago District Council last year voted to take a closer look at a fairer method of allocating town water and charges for excess use. Three of the district's four community boards - Roxburgh, Maniototo and Vincent - opted last year to suspend water billing for most of their residential water users until the matter had been further investigated.
The Cromwell Community Board decided to continue charging owners of large sections for excess water but to review the matter this year.
Council water services manager Russell Bond said yesterday the council had received more reports over summer of browned-off verges. The problem appeared to be district-wide.
Water metering for most of those residential properties had been suspended for the past year but maybe water conservation by residents, in light of pending billing, was a factor, he said.
"It's difficult to get a handle on the extent of the dry verges.
Although we've noticed more people have chosen not to water their front verges, and it seems to be more than usual, we haven't done a count-up yet," he said.
"We are getting more comments coming back to us about brown verges but haven't done any investigation into what the cause is, and to be fair, the towns do have a lot of holiday homes, so that might be a factor too."
On the positive side, he said town residents were making better use of irrigation and conserving water, which was one of the council's aims when introducing water metering.
"There's been no water restrictions this summer and people are being more careful about how they use irrigation water. When they were restricted to odd and even-day watering, as in other years, they tended to use the water on those days whether it was needed or not."
The council was irrigating more of its big parks and reserves using bore water instead of treated town supply water, and that had also played a part in water conservation, "taking some pressure off the town supplies", Mr Bond said.
Most of Anderson Park in Cromwell and Pioneer Park in Alexandra were on bore water and there were plans for the Alpha St reserve in Cromwell and Alexandra's Molyneux Park to also be irrigated using bore water.
