A heartfelt thanks to the many thousands of people across the country who participated in the Wyland Foundation's first annual National Mayor's Challenge for Water Conservation.

Residents from 1,000 cities in all 50 states made online pledges at www.mywaterpledge.com to save a total of 4.7 billion gallons of water over the next year, with a potential cost savings of $11.6 million. Residents further pledged to reduce their use of single-use plastic water bottles by 1.1 million bottles and eliminate 60,000 pounds of hazardous waste from entering watersheds. The program will resume again in April 2013 with more water-saving prizes and new ways for you and your city to take everyday actions for environmental change.

Special thanks to our National Presenting Partner Toyota. Organizations also involved in spearheading the Challenge included the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Water, U.S. Forest Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, WaterPik, Rain Bird, Lowe's, STERLING Plumbing, PADI and Project AWARE, and our regional broadcast partner, KCAL / KCBS

Winning cities were determined as those with the highest percentage of residents to make water-saving pledge in their zip code. Cities competed in four U.S. Regions (West, Midwest, South and Northeast) and three population categories within each region (5 - 30000, 300000 - 100000, and 100000+)