Orange County Niagara
According to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, about two-thirds of Orange County’s water demand is residential. That is, the vast majority of the water used here disappears into homes and is used for drinking, bathing, watering lawns and the like.
When water experts talk about large volumes of water they often refer to acre-feet. Orange County’s estimated demand for 1990 was almost 384,000 acre-feet. That is, enough water was used, just in homes, to cover 384,000 acres to a depth of one foot. So visualize three-fourths of the entire county under a foot of water and you get an idea of how much that is. And this residential demand is projected to rise 28% to almost 490,000 acre-feet during the next 20 years.
Converting current demand to gallons, though, drives home just how much water is used:
GALLONS PER DAY: 342,791,233 GALLONS PER HOUR: 14,282,968 GALLONS PER MINUTE: 238,050 GALLONS PER SECOND: 3,967 Source: Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
