All that hand-washing not reflected in Tucson Water usage

Posted Apr 14, 2020

Dylan Smith
TucsonSentinel.com

Steve Johnson/Flickr

You might be washing your hands a whole lot more these days, but Tucson Water figures haven't (yet) shown any substantial COVID-19-related changes — except there's no longer an early-morning peak in use, officials said.

Numbers for the month of March are the latest available, and "there does not appear to be a noticeable shift in water use for that time frame," said a Tucson Water spokesman.

Neither residential nor commercial water usage for March are substantially different than previous years, despite the coronavirus outbreak and the closure of many businesses, the numbers show. And those numbers were pretty much the same for January and February this year.

"I did just hear that our daily pattern has shifted," said Fernando Molina, spokesman for the city-owned water utility. "We used to have an early-morning peak in usage, but that seems to have dropped off, and we just see a gradual increase over the morning, then it tapers off."

The shift is likely due to "no morning rush to get ready for work at the same time," he said. "It gives a new meaning to beating the peak!"

Water use

Shown in 100s of cubic feet of water - 1Ccf = 748 gallons

Use	March 2016	March 2017	March 2018	March 2019	March 2020
Single Family	1,543,471	1,488,861	1,386,210	1,275,461	1,343,872
Duplex-Triplex	41,581	40,999	37,794	36,398	36,381
Multifamily	516,295	505,545	487,645	457,787	452,402
Sub-Mtrd MHP	30,192	30,971	29,301	25,923	28,009
Commercial	715,632	616,987	570,121	528,438	549,982
Industrial	28,759	29,311	28,085	10,905	26,965
Construction Wtr	22,600	22,807	18,661	23,432	13,502