Gwinnett Posts Interesting Statistics on Water Consumption
Gwinnett County has added a new page to its website that addresses some of the issues with the ongoing drought, and the county’s water consumption from Lake Lanier. One of the main points is makes is that Gwinnett draws a much smaller amount from the lake than the Army Corps of Engineers releases from Buford Dam. That’s pretty well illustrated in the following chart, which compares water usage over the last two months:
The county also addresses the issue of water consumption, noting that per-capita water usage has fallen from 80 gallons per day in the 1990s to 71.7 gallons per day on average from 2003-2006. Of course, this measure doesn’t account for the growth in the county’s population over the last ten years.
The ‘blame the drought on the population growth’ theme has grown louder in the past few weeks, including an article in this morning’s AJC. While the Gwinnett website notes that growth in the county as measured by the number of building permits has slowed tremendously over the past few years, I found a chart on another page of the website that shows that despite the growth, the county continues to use about the same amount of water from the lake:
Starting in 1999, when the county’s population was about 570,000 people, water usage stabilized at just under 80 million gallons per day. With a few fluctuations along the way, in 2005, the county was drawing just over 80 MGD, with a population that had grown by 160,000 to 730,000. The county points out that it’s not the growth that’s causing the problems, it’s the lack of rainfall.
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