Orange resident doing their bit: Lowest water use in a decade

Water conscious Orange residents have reduced their home water use to the lowest level in the last ten years.

According to figures from Orange City Council, during the week before the recent heavy storms. residents used 133 litres per person per day. The following week, that figure dropped even lower to 127 litres per person per day. And last week the average water use was just 119 litres per person per day.

“To find a water use level anywhere near that figure you’ve got to go back to record rainfall years like 2016, or the small amounts residents water their gardens in the middle of Winter,” said Orange Mayor Reg Kidd.

“We’ve checked back for the last ten years of records, but it’s likely this figure could be the lowest ever water use.”

To put that in comparison this time last year the average water use was 200 litres per person per day.

“It’s a sign of how much our community is working together and is committed to saving water,” said Cr Kidd.

And there’s a little more good news on the water front thanks to Orange’s storm water harvesting system.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology’s gauge, Orange received 135 mm of rain during, January, which put an extra 62 megalitres of water to our storage thanks to stormwater harvesting — that’s about six day’s water use.

Sadly, any rain that fell into the Suma Park catchment was soaked up by the parched paddocks and there was no natural run-off into the storage.

But it looks like there is more wet weather on the horizon and we are another day closer to breaking the drought.