Garden City Water Usage

Anita Weston, Reporter

Rich Civic Times 

GARDEN CITY, Utah.  February 9, 2017.  Bob Peterson, City Manager, was asked by the mayor to determine how the culinary water in Garden City is being used.  He gathered monthly data from the last several years and found the following results:

The city has spent time and effort on trying to determine how much water is being used by different groups having things in common.  One category was home size—small (under 2,000 sq. feet), medium (2,001 to 4,000 sq. feet), and large (over 4,001 sq. feet).  There were 78 homes that fit into the small area, 463 homes in the medium group, and 33 in the large category.

Some 451 homes have lawns and 123 do not have lawns.  There were 99 homes that were primary homes, 385 were secondary homes, and 90 other secondary homes that are short term rentals were used in the study.

The top ten water using homes used 8% of the water.  The top 11-100 homes used 38% of the water.  All other homes used 54% of the water.  The total amount of water used by the top 100 homes was 170,262,000 gallons.  The average amount of water used by these homes was 1,702,620 gallons.  The top 100 homes or 17 % of the single-family homes used 46 percent of the city’s distributed water.  The top 10 homes used 31,142,000 gallons of water and averaging 3,113,200 gallons. 

The top 100 water using homes shows that 98% of the top 100 homes have lawns.  That leaves only 2% of the top 100 homes without lawns.  The water usage on these non-lawn homes can be traced back to the following issues:  Home 1 had a major water leak in April 2014, using 637,000 gallons.  Home 2, a second home owner runs water 24/7 in the winter to prevent his pipes from freezing.

Removing these two anomalies in the data shows that 100% of the top 100 homes have lawns.  It should be noted that 80% of the top 100 homes were classified as a medium size home.  The other 20% were small and large in size.  Of the 22 Short term rental homes, 17 were medium size, 1 was small, and 4 were large.

The top 25 water using non-lawn homes includes 4 primary resident homes, 14 secondary homes, and 7 short term rentals.  The average occupancy is not known in the primary or secondary homes.  However, the average number of individuals in the short term rentals is 34.  The average amount of water usage by the primary resident homes is 904.8 gallons.  The average amount of water usage by the secondary homes is 855.2 gallons.  The average water usage for the second home short term rental homes was 794.7 gallons.

The conclusions that resulted from this study shows that the top 100 homes used 46% of the city’s distributed water.  The top 10 homes used 8% of the city’s water.  STR (Short term rentals) second homes were only 22% of the top 100 water using homes.   The average amount of water used by the homes in this study was 646,000 gallons.  The average amount of water used by the top 100 water users was 1,702,620 gallons.  Out of the top 25 water using homes without lawns only 28% were short term rentals.  From the top 25 water using homes without lawns, short term rental homes average 794,000 gallons.  From the top 25 water using homes without lawns, primary resident homes and second home owner used on average 1,600 per month more water than short term rentals.