Water Wise Denton

We are all so grateful for the cool weather day last week. While our thoughts are with Houston and other areas impacted by hurricane Beryl, we are grateful for the rain we are receiving here in Denton.

It's a great time to save money and turn off your sprinkler system!

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If you follow our city's daily water usage, you may have noticed the strange dip in our daily usage chart. You ALSO may have noticed that we beat the all time high water usage for the year, by 1.9 million gallons!

First, why the dip?

Our water system can produce up to 50 million gallons a day! But similarly to topping out the speed of your car, it's not a good idea to make a habit out of pushing to the limits. In the summer, we stress the system with extra water demand, which can mostly be attributed to extra irrigation usage, for the purpose of keeping grass green that naturally wants to go dormant during the heat. Now imagine you have a flat tire, you have to drive below the speed limit, and your car may only top out at 35 mph.

Similarly to the car, under extra summer stress for irrigation, parts become vulnerable, and yesterday one of those parts went out, and took our ability to produce from 50 million gallons per day (MGD) down to 45 MGD. The 3 lines across the top of the chart correspond to our TCEQ regulated thresholds for drought triggers. At 85%, 90%, and 95% of the system usage, we enter into different stages of drought. Normally that means 42.5 MGD, 45 MGD and 47.5 MGD. When we have a reduced treatment capacity, the 3 different percentiles become lower, in this case we could produce 45 MDG, so our triggers became 38.25 MGD, 40.5 MGD and 42.75 MGD.

It just so happened that while we were in reduced capacity, we say our highest demand yet. Luckily we were still 2 million gallons shy of Stage 1 Drought Triggers.

The last day of June saw the highest usage of the year so far, at 34 MILLION GALLONS!

While that is a huge number, it is also to be expected, considering we have had no rain in over 3 weeks, and temperatures are creeping up. Also, friday is a non-irrigation day, and we did see a dip in water usages on that day compared to weekend usages, THANK YOU!! The trends we see, tell us that our community is working together to be mindful of water usage - we appreciate you all!

We also saw significantly less water usage for the month compared to 2023, we reduced usage by 45 million gallons then we did in June 2023! Thank you Denton Community - you all are the best!

Happy Friday!

Thank you for adhering to our mandatory watering schedule! There is no watering at all on Fridays - but chances are you may see a neighbor or two watering anyways. If that happens... what do you do?

You can ALWAYS reach out to us, and we can send additional materials to the location. Odds are they somehow missed the irrigation schedule. We recommend, if you feel safe doing so, to reach out to your neighbor and politely let them know. Many people are turning on their systems and may not know there is a legacy setting going off on the wrong day. Or perhaps your neighbor is busy and meant to set the system to go off on a certain day and got distracted with life's responsibilities. With the schedule being new this year, there is a chance they somehow missed the information. NO matter the reason, when handled with kindness, a heads up between neighbors builds stronger communities. Together we can make a difference!

Yesterday saw the highest water usage again for 2024 at over 31 Million Gallons!

While irrigating grasses is the largest discretionary (or non essential to life) use of water, there are certainly some ways you can conserve indoors as well. Small changes make a big difference when we work together!

This Saturday we surpassed 30 million gallons of water demand from Denton Residents!

Yesterday was another record breaking water demand day, at nearly 30 million gallons. So what happens when we continue to increase demand?

It is normal for us to see demand increase throughout the summer, eventually topping out around mid-August, then decreasing in mid-September. With the power of both of our water treatment plants combined, we can treat a maximum of 50 Million Gallons of Water per day! While that is an impressive amount of water, it is not the best idea to use the system at full capacity. It can be helpful to think about your car, while you may be able to max out your car at 120 Miles per hour, it's not the best choice to continue to do so regularly.

So what do we do when residential usages increase? As a municipal provider, we are legally required to implement restrictions on water usage when demands creep up towards our capacity. There are certain triggers in place to determine exactly when and how we take action to avoid maxing out our system. These triggers are divided into 3 Categories:

So, for example, if we use 42.5 million gallons of water a day for 4 days in a row, we automatically enter Stage 1 Drought Restrictions, and we will remain in restrictions through the end of September, even if usages decrease. 42.5 Million gallons is 85 % of our 50 Million Gallon Capacity, and can begin to stress our system.

Each stage of drought has stricter guidelines on water usage, and no matter how much water is in the lake, or how rainy it has been, we are required to implement these measures.

When we adhere to the irrigation schedule (which is listed above in the main body of the page) , our demand spikes are not as dramatic, and we are much more likely to avoid entering into Drought Restrictions!

Demand has gone up to a weekly average of 25 Million Gallons of water per day, and yesterday we hit our highest demand yet, at 27.7 million gallons. That averages out to 155 gallons of water per person per day!

Small changes can make a big difference. If everyone in Denton turned the tap off while they brush their teeth, we'd save 300,000 gallons per day!