{"id":690,"date":"2011-10-27T10:00:02","date_gmt":"2011-10-27T15:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=690"},"modified":"2011-11-18T13:28:06","modified_gmt":"2011-11-18T19:28:06","slug":"the-top-25-water-hogs-in-austin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2011\/10\/27\/the-top-25-water-hogs-in-austin\/","title":{"rendered":"The Top 25 Water Users in Austin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/fusiontables\/embedviz?viz=MAP&amp;q=select+col1+from+1976331+&amp;h=false&amp;lat=30.308705887243324&amp;lng=-97.78715135449221&amp;z=12&amp;t=1&amp;l=col1\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"620\" height=\"400px\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A few years back, Lance Armstrong was caught. He apologized, admitted the error of his ways, and promised to do better in the future. His offense? Using too much water.<\/p>\n<p>Armstrong had used 330,000 gallons of water in July 2008. He hadn\u2019t even been home at his three acre, 14,475 square foot estate. \u201cI\u2019m a little shocked,\u201d he <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/08\/16\/us\/16lance.html\">told<\/a> <em>The New York Times<\/em> at the time. \u201cThere\u2019s no justification for that much water. I need to fix this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Well, it\u2019s been several summers since then, this last one being notable for being the hottest and driest <a href=\"http:\/\/kutnews.org\/post\/another-drought-record-shattered\">on record<\/a>.\u00a0And the city is in<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ci.austin.tx.us\/news\/cnews.cfm?nwsid=3910\">\u00a0stage two watering restrictions\u00a0<\/a>because of the historic drought.\u00a0\u00a0But it would appear Armstrong has not learned how to conserve. According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/fusiontables\/DataSource?snapid=S299427BYY-\">data<\/a> from Austin Water Utility, he used around 1.3 million gallons of water in the last year, putting him among the top ten residential users of water in town.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Armstrong isn\u2019t alone in using excessive amounts of water. In fact, he\u2019s not even the worst offender. That would be Roger Girling, who owns a home health care company. He used 1.9 million gallons of water in the last year. Also on the list of the top twenty-five residential water users in Austin? Venture capitalist Paul Zito, car dealers Doug Maund and Steven Late, and <a href=\"http:\/\/mccaul.house.gov\/\">Congressman Michael McCaul<\/a>, who went through 1.4 million gallons of water in the last year.<\/p>\n<p><div class=\"related-content alignright\"><h4 class=\"related-header\">Related<\/h4><div class=\"links\"><h5>Posts<\/h5><ul><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2011\/11\/03\/despite-drought-the-congressman-is-thirsty\/\">Why Texas Congressman McCaul is Among Austin\u2019s Top Water\u00a0Users<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2011\/11\/15\/five-things-you-didnt-know-about-water-in-texas\/\">Five Things You Might Not Know About Water in\u00a0Texas<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2011\/11\/07\/ten-things-you-should-know-about-the-texas-drought\/\">Ten Things You Should Know About the Texas Drought<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/div><div class=\"topics\"><h5>Topics<\/h5><p class=\"topic\"><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/11\/119835727-60x60.jpg\" height=\"60\" width=\"60\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/topic\/drought\/\">Everything You Need to Know About the Texas Drought<\/a><\/p><p class=\"topic\"><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/08\/WaterinTexas1-60x60.jpg\" height=\"60\" width=\"60\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/topic\/water-in-texas\/\">Your Guide to Water Issues In\u00a0Texas<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/div>There are also some other high-profile names on the list, like former Longhorn\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cedric_Benson\">Cedric Benson<\/a>\u00a0(now a running back for the Cincinnati Bengals) and\u00a0ad man\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/itsnotwhatyousell.com\/spence-about.htm\">Roy Spence<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As you can see on the map above created by StateImpact Texas, the extreme water users are primarily concentrated in the West Austin and Westlake neighborhoods.\u00a0They each used over a million gallons of water over the last year, according to Austin Water Utility, with annual water bills over $13,000. The average Austin resident uses about 100,000 gallons of water a year.<\/p>\n<p>The data was released after local environmentalist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.austineconetwork.com\/blog\/top-10-residential-water-users-fy2011?utm_source=Austin+EcoNewsletter&amp;utm_campaign=11b46112f3-EcoNews102411_LCmix_TGN_GreenTie_KAB_HFest_Tar&amp;utm_medium=email\">Paul Robbins<\/a>\u00a0made an open records request. In some cases, customers (like Lance Armstrong) redacted their address and exact water use, but their rank on the list is public. Addresses for those who had them redacted were located through voter registration records.<\/p>\n<p>You can report <a href=\"http:\/\/coa311web.ci.austin.tx.us\/web_intake\/Controller?op=locform&amp;invSRType=WWREPORT&amp;invSRDesc=Water%20Waste%20Report&amp;locreq=N&amp;stnumreqd=N\">water waste online<\/a> through Austin 3-1-1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few years back, Lance Armstrong was caught. He apologized, admitted the error of his ways, and promised to do better in the future. His offense? Using too much water. Armstrong had used 330,000 gallons of water in July 2008. He hadn\u2019t even been home at his three acre, 14,475 square foot estate. \u201cI\u2019m a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[58],"tags":[61,85],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=690"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":698,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions\/698"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}