[Drought Level 2 Lifted Today] San Angelos current water supply is just over 30 months, which by ordinance requires the city council to return to Water Conservation Stage, the least restrictive stage. Many San Angelo residents oppose such a move. Some of the logic of why our City has these rules and why they have worked so well for San Angelo in the past is explained below: ---Water Usage/Evaporation-Percolation for June 30th--- . (Percolation is underground water losses) City of San Angelo: 39 AF (Acre-Feet Consumed) South Pool Twin Buttes: 19.5 AF (Evaporation-Percolation) North Pool Twin Buttes: 30.15 AF (Evaporation-Percolation) Lake Ivie: 163.5 AF (Evaporation-Percolation) (27.3 is our part) Lake Nasworthy: 28 AF (Evaporation-Percolation) For every gallon saved yesterday, 2 additional gallons were lost due to natural losses of water. The City is consuming 33% (1/3rd) of the water being lost, and of that water, a fourth is being lost in the transmission system of pipes. Thus, only 25% of the water in our lakes is actually making it to our homes and businesses. San Angelo uses around 15,000 acre-feet of water each year. 9000 of that is used for indoor use. 6000 is for vegetation. By curtailing the outdoor use of water by 1/3rd, we could save roughly 2000 acre-feet this year. By doing so, we would reduce our our overall losses by around 4.4%, which would extend our water supply by 40 days from 30.5 months to 31.8 months. In the meantime, the City of San Angelo loses $2.6 million in revenue due to the reduction in water usage. That is the equivalent of using up 7.3 cents of San Angelos property tax rate of 78 cents per $100 valuation. If we sell the water, we can free up funds to do a combination of things, like lowering our property taxes, increasing the pay of city workers (police/fire/staff), fix leaking water transmission lines, which would reduce system losses, thus saving water in the long-run. The water resources have to be viewed from a water conservation and water funding dichotomy that balances revenue generation and water conservation such that we maximize our water supply and minimize our costs. When San Angelo has 30 months of water, our conservation efforts are only about 25% efficient (assuming transmission system losses continue whether we have our water on in our homes, or not.) As water levels dwindle, our net efficiency will increase with declining evaporation and percolation losses, thus implementing drought-level restrictions is more and more effective, plus we have more and more need to extend our water supplies. Im leaving out other benefits to maintaining constancy with drought levels. More on that, to come. Disclaimer: These numbers are a snapshot of water from one day, and they are an estimation of the characteristics of water supply, water usages and water losses, to demonstrate the efficiencies or inefficiencies of saving water when our lakes have 30 months of life in them. These numbers should not necessarily be considered scientific, or their accuracy relied upon for any particular purpose. Water usage, losses, costs and revenues are complicated subjects to evaluate. Ill answer questions as best as I can. Im hoping experts in this field will join in on the discussions. -Paul Alexander
Posted on: Wed, 02 Jul 2014 00:38:33 +0000
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