State releases estimates of Alabama’s 2015 water use and consumption
The Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs’ Office of Water Resources recently released a report with an updated estimate of water use and consumption for Alabama. The full report as well as individual appendices are available online at adeca.alabama.gov/water.
The report is part of an ongoing commitment to monitor the state’s water use and water availability. It provides an assessment of water withdrawals and consumptive water use (or net demand) in Alabama for 2015.
“This report represents ADECA’s commitment to better understand how water is being used throughout Alabama and any trends that may impact our state and our quality of life,” ADECA Director Kenneth Boswell said. “Water use and availability play a vital role in building stronger communities and is very important to the future growth of Alabama.”
Water withdrawals were estimated for eight categories of use:
Public Supply
Self-supplied Residential
Irrigation
Livestock
Aquaculture
Self-supplied Industrial
Mining
Thermoelectric Power
The total of all these water withdrawals in 2015 was estimated to be 8.2 billion gallons per day.
The report looks at the “monthly consumptive net demands” for 2015 in three broad categories:
Public Water Supply
Agriculture
The combination of Industrial, Thermoelectric, and Mining Water Use
To better understand “monthly consumptive net demands,” think of the amount of water used in a household and how much of that water is eventually returned to the source through drainage and sewer service.
In those three categories, the net withdrawals for 2015 were estimated to total 114 million gallons per day (MGD.)
A comparison between the total 2015 net demands of 114 MGD and the total withdrawals of 8.2 billion gallons-per-day result in an overall consumption rate of just over one percent; reflecting a significant impact of returns.
The 2010 total net demand was estimated at 84 MGD with the largest differences from 2015 occurring in the public water supply sector (28 MGD in 2010 versus -70 MGD for 2015). Several factors may account for this, but the most significant is that rainfall in 2010 was approximately 10 inches below normal while rainfall in 2015 was approximately 3 inches above normal.
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Established by the Alabama Water Resources Act in 1993, OWR is charged with planning, coordinating, developing and managing Alabama's water resources, both ground and surface water, in a manner that is in the best interest of the state. The act also established the Alabama Water Resources Commission which advises OWR, makes policy recommendations to the Governor and Legislature, and adopts rules and regulations for programs implemented by OWR.