An Aurora town councillor, fighting for her constituents' "right to dry," plans to take her battle in defence of old-fashioned laundry lines to council next month.

Phyllis Morris told CBC that people trying to save a little cash on soaring energy costs and be kind to the environment should have the right to hang their clothes outdoors if they choose. She launched her "Right to Dry" campaign five weeks ago and dismisses claims that laundry lines are unsightly.

"You have an issue here where people have their own homes, and maybe 20 odd years ago they may have signed a restrictive land use covenant," Morris said. "It's questionable if developers even have the right to place those kinds of covenants."

Morris said she is investigating who — subdivision builders or municipalities — has the right to determine these restrictions. She noted that the government's planning act — which has provisions for energy conservation — may allow local municipalities to reject builder-homeowner agreements banning laundry lines.

"You've got to find ways to help the environment, and this is just a simple, simple one that could be corrected with the willingness of the development industry," she said. "This has purely been driven, I believe by aesthetics initially, when people are selling their subdivisions."

Some developers allow umbrella-style clothes hangers to be used outdoors as an alternative to laundry lines.

Morris said her constituents want the right to choose.

"It's not like GM or Ford or Chrysler tell you what you can put on your bumper sticker once you drive off the lot," she said. "Most developers sell out of a trailer or a show home, and then they take up stakes and off they go to the next development. Twenty years later we're still sitting with outdated restrictions."

Councillors in Markham, King Township, Richmond Hill and Newmarket have thrown their support behind Morris' campaign.

Kate Johnson, a Kingston resident, launched a similar campaign in July of this year dubbed "Free the Sheets." Johnson lobbied the provincial government, saying that the ban was implemented needlessly to control esthetics and safeguard against civil lawsuits.

Meanwhile in Florida, the state government protected clotheslines when it passed a law designed to promote solar power.

The Ontario Ministry of the Environment says that a standard clothes dryer consumes 900 kWh of energy per year, creating up to 840 kg of air pollution and greenhouse gases.