Ivins used an average of 60 million gallons of water a month over the past twelve months. Based on our population growth since 2005, we would be using over 70 million gallons a month now.
Conservation works. And we’re just getting started. We didn’t have any “tools” to use to help with conservation for most of those 18 years. We do now. The Washington County Water Conservancy District (WCWCD) started offering rebates for grass removal a few months ago. They also provide rebates for installing smart irrigation controllers and switching to WaterSense-labeled toilets.
And Karry Rathje at WCWCD told me last week they will be adding a rebate for hot water on demand systems as soon as the funding/program details are in place. Check their website at www.wcwcd.org for more information.
Let’s Make It Personal
How many gallons of water did you use in the past year? The chart below shows how much water single-family homes in Ivins used in the twelve months through the end of January. Mostly.
There were 124 homes that used more than 330,000 gallons. But if I included them in the chart and continued to show results in 10,000-gallon increments, the charts would have been very wide because a few users consumed over one-million gallons each.
Why don’t you pull out your latest utility bill to see how you compare. Your bill shows a chart of your monthly usage. The numbers at the bottom of the chart just above the months row show what you used each month in thousands of gallons.
Now The Challenge
How much can you lower your water use in the next twelve months? It would be helpful to learn from each other what conservation strategies we each worked on and how useful they were.
This is going to be a difficult challenge for anyone who is already focused on conservation, but it will be interesting to see if there is any more room for additional water savings. Let me know if you want to join me in this water challenge.
Please share your comments on this topic and tell me about
other Ivins issues I have not addressed in recent posts.
Email me at Mike@MikeScott4Ivins.com.
Recent “Water” posts
- Shocked and Dismayed: Still No Drought PlanPDF 📄Back in April, the Washington County Water Conservancy District’s (WCWCD’s) Administrative Advisory Committee finally voted to recommend adoption of a Water Shortage Contingency Plan. That should have been the breakthrough moment. Instead, here we are in September, and now we’re told the plan may not be finalized until the end of 2025. That’s after…
- My Take on Growth, Roads, Water, & MorePDF 📄Robert MacFarlane, an Ivins resident who pays a lot of attention to local issues and hosts the 435 Podcast sent a questionnaire to all city council candidates in the county. I wrote detailed responses to all seven questions, but they were too big and blew up his online survey form. So I redid those responses as…
- Closer To a Drought Plan?PDF 📄Today, the Washington County Water Conservancy District’s (WCWCD’s) Administrative Advisory Committee (AAC) voted to recommend adoption of a long-overdue Water Shortage Contingency Plan, but there’s a twist. (Download draft plan) (Download presentation explaining the plan) Collectively, they agreed that the action steps in the plan need to be modified, but individually it appears they…
- Down the Drain or Back Again? The Future of WastewaterPDF 📄Last night, Peter Annin, author of Purified and a leading expert on water recycling, gave a presentation organized by Conserve Southwest Utah on how communities across the country are rethinking wastewater—and how Washington County could, too. Annin highlighted case studies from places that have successfully turned wastewater into a reliable water source, including cities…
- Parched Today, Prepared Tomorrow: The Need for Drought PlanningPDF 📄As we experience the driest water year in at least 42 years, the need for a clear, effective drought contingency plan for Washington County and its cities has never been more urgent. For over three years, the Washington County Water Conservancy District (WCWCD) has been working on a plan, but getting eight cities to…