Lubbock Water Usage Increases for October

In the midst of the recent drought, Lubbock citizens have been using even more water than usual.

For the month of October, the first month of fiscal year 2011-2012, Lubbockites used 1,230,728,000 gallons of water. That comes out to 169 gallons per capita daily.

In the same period last year, citizens used nearly 1,019,000 gallons, coming out to 140 gallons per capita daily. Both were sizable increases over October 2008, which only saw a usage of 854,290,000 gallons.

The City’s 5-year average for water use is 978,639,000 gallons, coming out to 144 gallons daily per capita.

The amount of water from sources which the City of Lubbock is drawing from changed quite a bit as well. For October in fiscal year 2010-2011, the City drew 906,953,000 gallons of water from the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority, which controls Lake Meredith. Last month, 627,959,000 gallons were taken from CRMWA.

The difference is currently being made up by pumping from well fields in Bailey County. In October of 2010, 111,574,000 gallons were used from these well fields, but last month, 602,769,000 gallons were drawn from the Bailey County source.

The City will soon be able to add Lake Alan Henry to its list of water supplies, which has a scheduled completion date of June 2012.