Whopping 169 gallons per day water usage in water scarce Utah where I live now!

By Rajiv Shah

Even as rains lashed Salt Lake City, the capital of the US state Utah, where I live now, I was a little surprised to read a story in a local website. The story says, "When it comes to per capita water use in the US, Utah ranks second at 169 gallons per day. That's only slightly behind Idaho's 184 gallons per person each day."

I was interested in the story as it would help those seeking to compare water usage and management in India -- many of whose states are water scarce -- with that in US. In India water usage is 443 gallons per day (both domestic and agricultural).

Utah gets very little of precipitation compared to other US states. It's capital, where I stay, Salt Lake City, gets about 16 inches of rainfall in a year. Another town, Delta, gets 8 inches of precipitation each year. By way of comparison, India's average annual rainfall is around 115 inches, and of Gujarat, a water scarce state, it's around one third of it.

At the same time, the story claims, thanks to water management, despite rise in its population (Utah's population "grew by more than 61,000 in a single year, the majority of which came from net migration"), there is enough water available for people.

The story says, "The dramatic growth has occurred even though Utah has not seen any major new dams built since southern Utah's Sand Hollow in 2002 and northern Utah's Jordanelle in 1993. In other words, the water needed by hundreds of thousands of new Utah residents has been dependent on and accommodated by earlier water projects from water managers with the foresight to conserve the state's limited water resources."

At the same time, the story points to high water usage in the US. It states, "Water withdrawal in the United States has increased over the last decades, reaching 322 billion gallons per day in 2015. The US is one of the largest per capita consumers water in the world, in addition to being one of the largest absolute consumers of water."

It continues, "The average U.S. family uses some 400 gallons of water per day. However, a large share of water is lost or wasted through leaky pipes or just evaporation and over-watering landscapes."

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