Water Conservation

1,083,790,164 gallons of water were pumped from Oct. 1, 2005 to Sept. 30, 2006, for an increase of 19.0% from fiscal year 2005’s 910,928,032 gallons. Note that we only had a 2.45% increase in number of connections. This increase is likely due to the long warm dry spring and summer and the fact that the lower 2005 use reflects the governor’s declared drought even though the 2005 spring and summer were relatively cool and wet.

Conservation – the bad news, though tempered by the long warm and dry spring and summer.

• The 2006 average family home annual consumption increased from 83,262 gallons in 2005 to 91,253 gallons in 2006. This 9.6% increase from 228 to 250 gallons per day per home reflects the items noted above.

• Bad news, non-residential consumption increased a whooping 147.9% in 2006, reflecting heavy landscape water use throughout the spring & summer. This will be any area for both water audits as part of our conservation rogram and renewed efforts to have the county’s commercial landscaping regulations changed to reduce required irrigation.

• Continuing bad news; system wide peak day use increased 24.2% from 4,998,281 gallons in 2005 to 6,207,990 gallons in 2006. Though this is a large annual increase peak day use, it is still much less than historic peak days.

As bleek as these numbers may sound, the increases, while not encouraging, must be viewed with the understanding that 2006 was very dry and warmer than normal. Every month in 2006 except January was below normal for rainfall, while though a drought was declared in 2005 the actual conditions changed to cooler and wetter than normal. These are the types of conditions that must be given consideration when we set our Compnay’s conservation goals and in larger regional water planning efforts.

See also our Summer Conservation and Winter Conservation Checklists.