Fred Jones, Garden City Water Resource Manager, gave a mid-year update on water consumption withing the city at the Garden City Commission’s regular meeting Tuesday. Generally, water consumption within the city has increased significantly this past year, Jones said. About 6.5% more water was used in 2022 than the city’s five-year average. “Water consumption continues to trend upwards; we’re averaging about 1% per year, and the range consumption totals differs by approximately 89 million gallons over the past six years,” he said. “It’s going up, but it’s not dramatic.” Jones said irrigation tends to get the brunt of the abuse for that increase, but there are other uses of water that do increase in the summertime that the city is probably getting to a point, in terms of the industrial capacity in Garden City, that they need to look at, which is water required for cooling. This year they are going to do some analysis of that, to see if they can get a better picture of what the cooling footprint is in Garden City, which can include any large businesses, the hospital and Garden City Community College. “We may be looking for some ways we can work with some of those entities just to provide them some more information education to help them conserve some water and hopefully save their businesses some money as well,” he said.
Source: Garden City Telegram
