Grass is Always Greener: Outdoor Residential Water Use in Texas.

摘要

As Texas demand for water rises with increasing population, expanding our awareness of the ways we consume water becomes essential, especially as we seek to reduce consumption through conservation. Numerous detailed studies of single-family residential water use have been conducted nationally over the past three decades; however, no such research has been done in Texas. A study published in 2010 compared winter to summer municipal use within the state, but to date, there is no evaluation specific to annual single-family residential water use. In this study we analyzed annual seasonal single-family residential water usage in cities across Texas using monthly data provided to the Texas Water Development Board either as part of its annual Water Use Survey or upon request. We evaluated indoor and outdoor consumption patterns for 259 Texas cities from 2004 through 2008 and for 17 Texas cities from 2004 through 2011. Our analysis shows that about 31 percent of single-family residential annual water consumption is dedicated to outdoor purposes. Broadly, drier parts of the state use a greater proportion of water for outdoor purposes than wetter areas, but there can be a great deal of variability within a particular region. Among individual cities, we did not find a strong correlation between monthly outdoor water use and precipitation, though the lack of association may be due to issues with the temporal resolution of the data. However, we did see evidence of greater outdoor water use in 2011, one of the driest years on record, and during the 2009 to 2011 study period, a recognized time of low precipitation for the state. Further study is needed to determine the factors that drive single-family residential consumption patterns across the state.