Sunday, February 11, 2018

Water Water, Do We Have Enough Water?

The city staff presented a 20 page analysis to the City County on Janyary 23, 2018 Water Resource Utilization. It focuses about 90% of the time on conservation with no discussion about recycling or increasing available supply to support the continued growth of Georgetown.

It appears that over 2016 to 2017 the city increased production/consumption of water while also decreasing consumption per person. The net increase was about 0.9B gallons for the year.

Currently the city has 55,670 acre feet of raw water available annually. This is equivalent to 18.1B gallons of water. With 2017 water consumption at 7.2B gallons, there would be about 12B gallons annually available for growth. If consumption continues to grow as the population increases at about 0.9B gallons per year, all the available water will be used in 13 to 15 years.

The issue is more complex than presented here, but, the city needs to do the analysis that includes drought years and treatment needs in addition to conservation to get a true picture of our water future.

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