It is undeniably reasonable to conserve water in an arid climate. It is reasonable to conserve in the sense of being both arguably wise and inherently preferable. Obviously no community anywhere wants to run out of water, but when a community is subject to erratic year-to-year rainfall and shrinking supplies of groundwater, concerns about water conservation are greater, as they should be.
Let's be frank: Amarillo is not quite a desert. We live in a semi-arid plains environment. Our average annual rainfall is of sufficient quantity for survival. We also sit above vast underground stores of water. With a little effort and a lot of pipe, we can bring those underground sources right to the heart of our city and not really notice whether water supplies are shrinking.
Let's also be frank about the reality of water in the panhandle. Amarillo's 30 year annual average for precipitation is 19.71 inches. But in the 21st century, we have so far averaged 18.79 inches, almost a full inch less per year; and remember, these are averages. In 2011, only 7 inches were recorded in Amarillo, the lowest year on record. While one inch per year on average may not sound like much, the effect is significant. To put it another way, considering the area of Amarillo at 90.3 square miles, one inch of rain in the city limits is about 1.5 billion gallons of water. That volume represents about 9% of the total water used by Amarilloans last year.
Obviously we are using a lot of water, and as the city continues to grow we should expect that we will use more. More homes will be built, more businesses established, and with those things come more lawns and landscaping, more toilets and sinks, and more demands on the water system. While growth in our city is unavoidable, especially given our prospering economy, water use does not necessarily have to grow, too. There are ample opportunities for water savings, if only the citizens of Amarillo, and especially our leaders, are willing to recognize the water problem as just that: a problem.
We need watering restrictions. Up to this point, Amarillo has pursued only a policy of voluntary watering restrictions, and based on the data from the last three years alone, that policy has undeniably failed. In 2012 we set a daily record for water use: 92.1 million gallons on July 31st. That's about 450 gallons per person in the city, and that was just one day. And this in one of the drier years on record, a time when we should actually have been concerned about the availability of water.
Restricting water use is not a novel idea. Cities like Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, and many other cities in these metro areas have watering restrictions, and this is in areas that receive on average 50% more precipitation per year than Amarillo. These localities, with ever increasing demands on water systems and ever shrinking water supplies (both above and below ground), recognize that they need to manage how much their customers use. These cities and their citizens have decided that the water supply is a resource that needs to be managed.
Lest someone raise the argument of personal liberty against any attempt to implement watering restrictions, remember that most of the public water systems in the state which have mandatory restrictions are in areas no less conservative than ours. Texas is largely a conservative state, and attitudes and beliefs about personal liberty do not tend to differ much from region to region. Yet in the city of Amarillo there seems to be a deeply rooted hesitancy to the idea of restricting water use for customers on the city's water system. This hesitancy is not only irrational relative to the problem of water availability, it is also irrational relative to the actions of populations much like ours.
There is another problem with any argument against watering restrictions, namely that any argument against conservation is an argument in favor of waste. While few would probably voice such an opinion -- that waste is preferable in the name of personal liberty -- in light of our actual water situation and climatic conditions, every effort against conservation is effectively an effort in support of waste. Personal liberty is inarguably an important thing, but the reality is that we are running out of water, and conservation is a small price to pay for a largely theoretical loss of liberty.
When it comes down to it, we can't live without water. We can live without lawns, golf courses, and water parks, but not the water which makes them possible. I am not advocating the eradication of these things per se, I'm only highlighting the importance of water for life-sustaining uses. It's time for Amarilloans to realize that we are in fact a semi-arid climate, a climate with unreliable precipitation, significant evaporation, and limitations to what vegetation will thrive here. Among the many actions we need to take in order to thrive in our environment, restricting our water use is primary. We need watering restrictions in Amarillo if we're going to continue to be a great and thriving city for the decades to come.
