Rod Davis wrote in to remind me that he’d reported in his story for us that Dallas, in fact, is not a water hog. From the story:
Nobody quarrels with the need to conserve. And nobody honest would dispute that North Texans have little sense of the worth of their water. But to be fair, Dallas is wrongly tagged as a water hog. The city’s use of 198 gallons per capita daily (gpcd) is down from 260 gpcd in 1998. If residential is separated from commercial use, it’s only about 100 gcpd, according to DWU estimates. Dallas thus compares increasingly favorably to San Antonio’s 132 gcpd and El Paso’s 140–both dramatically lowered in recent years, too. El Paso most dramatically lowered its usage after major public education initiatives from the city water utility and giveaways such as low-flow shower heads and toilets.
It’s an important clarification.