FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                                            SEPTEMBER 24, 2019

High Water Mark: Austin’s Highest Water Consumers for 2018 Released

As all of Travis County suffers under Stage 2 drought and Austin has implemented a burn ban in its city limits, data for the Austin Water Utility’s top consumers in 2018 is now available. The numbers show that, despite the region’s scorching summers and frequent drought cycles, a culture of water waste among certain Residential customers continues unabated.

Paul Robbins, an environmental activist and consumer advocate in Central Texas who requested and analyzed the data, observed that “High water bills are nature’s way of telling you that you have too much money. This is a profile of the people who waste water, in large part, because they can afford to.”

“Lost here is the concept of ‘noblesse oblige,’ that the privileged have a responsibility to lead by example and show others how to manage things like natural resources.”

• In FY 2018, the average annual consumption per Residential customer was 68,000 gallons. Each of these top 47 water consumers used between 12 and 29 times the 2018 average.
• 33 out of 47 customers live in homes between 4,300 and 14,500 square feet appraised by the Travis County Appraisal District at between $1 million and $7.6 million in 2018.
• 39 out of 47 customers live on property appraised at over $1 million in 2018 irrespective of home size.
• 30 out of 47 customers have between 1 and 9 acres of land at or near the home site.
• 35 out of 47 customers have swimming pools, and many of these also have spas and/or hot tubs and outdoor fountains.
• 21 out of 47 customers live in the zip code 78746. 43 out of 47 customers live in wealthy areas of Austin.

This analysis did not directly interview the customers, but Internet searches have preliminarily identified the professions or activities of 28 out of these 47 Residential customers. They include doctors, lawyers, financiers, business people in electronics hardware and software, developers, philanthropists, and even a well-known martial arts actor. At least 2 are or were heavily involved in state politics. One of these customers is identified as among the largest landowners in the entire U.S.

Below is a list of the top Residential water consumers in Austin in 2018 and their consumption in gallons as provided by the Austin Water Utility.

One customer not on the 2018 list was Congressman Michael McCaul. Last year he made national news for being the top Residential water consumer on the City of Austin system in 2017. Information showed that his 14,400 square-foot mansion consumed at least a million gallons a year. He has often been in the top 50 Austin water consumers since 2009.

“This was probably not the kind of front-page publicity for leadership that the Congressman had in mind,” said Robbins. “For whatever reason though, he is not on this list of top water wasters this year, and I congratulate him. I hope some of these other top water consumers follow his example.”

Another interesting observation is Austin’s largest single water user, Samsung. In 2018, it used 4.6 billion gallons, 11% of Austin’s retail water sales, enough to provide for 68,000 average Austin homes. Samsung’s 2018 use was a 112% increase from only a year earlier.

Notes:

This link is more specific information on the Residential customers listed. Even though some of the customer’s requested privacy that restricted the addresses and specific consumption, the unspecified usage fell between other customers on this list with specific information and can be easily estimated.

In almost all cases, the names could be matched with data from the Travis County Appraisal District and Internet searches to determine their residences or probable residences. The majority on this list could also be identified for their likely professions and community activities. However, none of these customers were interviewed for this analysis.

Originally, the top 50 customers were requested.  However, errors in the original data were adjusted, and this reduced this number to 47.

 

Austin’s top single-family water user in 2017: a U.S. congressman

By Philip Jankowski – American-Statesman Staff, July 31, 2018

The sprawling West Austin home of Congressman Mike McCaul used more city-supplied water than any other single-family residence in 2017, according to the Austin water utility.

McCaul’s hillside home near Lake Austin was one of 22 residences calculated to have used more than one million gallons of city water in 2017.

“These people have wealth that most of us in the city could not imagine,” [Paul] Robbins told the Statesman. “It would be easy for them to hire someone that could help them save water. They simply just don’t care.”

Taps flowing, but is there demand for Austin’s WaterTreatment Plant 4?

By Andra Lim – American-Statesman, Posted: 8:35 p.m. Friday, Dec. 19, 2014

At the grand opening Friday for a water treatment plant in West Austin, a trio of city officials raised their glasses and said “cheers” to a project that has often been the target of jeers.

Even as city officials toasted the facility Friday, they also admitted that the water demand projections that helped persuade a slim City Council majority to approve building the plant in 2009 didn’t come true.

The last thing Austin needed to do was build a half-billion-dollar water treatment plant at this time,” environmental activist Paul Robbins said. “We are up to our gills in overcapacity. No pun intended.”

Robbins: Dry lakes demand conservation

Austin Statesman, September 17, 2013

 The question on a lot of people’s minds right now is, “How low can they go?”

Lakes Travis and Buchanan, which supply much of our region’s water, are not natural lakes. They are reservoirs completed in the 1930s and ’40s. At full capacity, they hold 2 million acre-feet. (An acre-foot is enoughwater for annual needs of about three average Austin homes.)

Today, barring a major rainstorm, they are about to fall to their lowest levels since they were created. In September 1952, the lakes reached 621,000 acre-feet. On Sept. 10, they were at 659,000 acre-feet and dropping by about 1,400 acre-feet per day. Those worried about the water supply are in the perverse position of “praying for hurricanes.”

People living near the lakes, as well as cities facing water shortfalls, have become resentful of the rice farmers in the Colorado River’s lower basin area. It must be remembered that these farms have been cut off from their water supply for the past two years, the first time this has happened in the history of the lakes. It should also be remembered that federal funding for the lakes partially relied on the congressional support of the agrarian region downstream.

And while there is considerably more wealth per gallon generated by cities and industries compared to farms, this wealth will not be especially meaningful without food. In 2011, farmers paid about $28 per acre-foot for raw water to grow enough rice to feed about 1.2 million people annually on a calorie basis. Meanwhile, Austinites were willing to pay $1,600 per acre-foot for treated water to grow their “crop” of grass.

Believe it or not, it can get worse. If you total current use from Austin and other cities, future water contracts to provide for Austin’s growth, industrial use, evaporation from the lakes, and agricultural use, and apply it to current lake levels and drought conditions, the Highland Lakes would be below zero.

It is time to start planning in earnest for the future. There are no longer enough resources to provide for insatiable thirst of all who come here. We will either face huge increases in cost or need to create a water-efficient economy. Conservation of both water and money are key.

Five of the most promising strategies need center attention.

• Full implementation of 2007 conservation plan: In 2007, Austin created an aggressive conservation plan with 19 strategies to save water. Today, many of these ideas are still not implemented or have their effectiveness compromised. Some, such as mandatory plumbing fixtures retrofits, have stalled because they are controversial. Others, such as mandatory irrigation audits, have no method to measure effectiveness.

•Reclaimed water: The use of highly-treated wastewater for non-potable purposes such as irrigation and cooling towers has been employed to great effect in other cities. Austin has invested more than $50 million in its own “purple pipe” system. This has the potential to defray as much as 50 million gallons per day of peak capacity, the same as will be provided by the controversial Water Treatment Plant No. 4. However, Austin’s overly strict hook-up policies, lack of marketing staff, and lack of customer-side financing are constricting the use of this new system.

•Polyethylene utility pipe: Austin is using polyvinyl chloride water pipe as its material of choice. This is extremely toxic to manufacture and is more prone to leaks than polyethylene pipe, which is almost leak-proof and sometimes cheaper to install. Austin needs to replace more than 700 miles of old cast iron pipe that is at the end of its life, and it should be using the best materials.

•No new water projects: When Water Treatment Plant No. 4 comes online, this half-billion-dollar facility will raise Austin’s peak capacity to 335 million gallons per day. This past August, the city barely used half of this amount. This unneeded expenditure, and others like it, directly compete with water conservation funding.

•Relocate water conservation programs: Austin’s water conservation programs are administered by a utility whose main mission is to sell water. This is a blatant conflict of interest. The water conservation programs should be moved to a separate agency unshackled to the water utility.

Conservation is the best option we have right now, and the least expensive. It is past time to make the hard decisions necessary to make it work to its full potential.

Praying for hurricanes is not a drought-management policy.

Robbins is the editor of the Austin Environmental Directory. The new edition is online at environmentaldirectory.info.

Then There’s This: The Irony of Conservation

Austin’s water-saving habits will delay need for WTP4

By Amy Smith, Austin Chronicle, Fri., Dec. 21, 2012

Among the city’s biggest water users, some familiar names

Marty Toohey, Austin Statesman, October 28, 2011

A handful of prominent Austinites are again among the city’s thirstiest residential water users, including some who previously blamed broken pipes and other aberrations for using far more water than the typical Austin Water Utility customer.

With Central Texas more than a year into one of the worst droughts in recorded history, the households of health care magnate Robert Girling, auto dealer Doug Maund, lobbyist Neal “Buddy” Jones, U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul and champion cyclist Lance Armstrong used between 13 and 20 times what the average Austin home used over the past year, according to Austin Water Utility records.

The list, obtained through an open records request by environmental activist Paul Robbins and verified by the American-Statesman with the water utility, shows water consumption from Oct. 1, 2010, to Sept. 30, 2011. That time frame roughly corresponds to the current drought, which has left Lake Travis, Austin’s primary source of water, about 37 percent full and dropping.

 

Toilet program, once flush with cash, asking for more funding

Rebates for high-efficiency toilets have resulted in 1.3 million gallons of water saved per day.

Marty Toohey, Austin Statesman, Aug 31, 2012

For years, the City of Austin has offered to pay most or all of the cost of buying and installing new, high-efficiency toilets to help the city conserve a limited resource.

They have asked for an additional $3 million for the program…

Paul Robbins, a longtime environmental activist and frequent critic of the water utility, contends…

“It’s cheaper to do a shared savings program,” Robbins said. “Instead, they’re throwing toilets out of airplanes. They seem to have forgotten that money is a nonrenewable resource.”

Then There’s This: No Drought Here

So what if the lakes are half full – it rained, didn’t it?

By Amy Smith, Fri., Austin Chronicle, July 27, 2012 

Who are Austin’s top water users?

Some were on the list last time it was published

David Scott, KXAN, Updated: Thursday, 20 Oct 2011, 9:50 PM CDT

No. 3 in 2010, Robert W. Girling takes the top spot this year, consuming nearly two million gallons of water. The Girling maid said the family had no comment about it, when asked.

Another repeat customer on the list is Congressman Michael McCaul. He comes in sixth, using 1.4 million gallons. His office said they are looking into underground irregularities because a number of top users live in close proximity. When McCaul came in the top 10 users last year, his office blamed an underground leak.

Cycling champ Lance Armstrong comes in eighth on the list, four spots higher than former University of Texas Longhorns running back Cedric Benson, who used nearly 1.3 million gallons.

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NOTE: This story was based on a public information release made by Paul Robbins.