How Much Water Does a City Use?

Toronto recently released water usage data for the past 10 years. Below is my analysis of the data.

Some interesting facts:

• If we were to take all of the water used in 2007, it would fill a perfect sphere with a radius of 6.3Km.
• The amount of water used in the past 10 years by the city is enough to fill lake Superior over 85% full.
• Residential consumption has dropped 11% since 2007.
• In 2010 a Toronto citizen used on average 369,200,000L (using population data from 2006).
• This doesn’t seem right. Is my math off? 924105963750 m³/2503280 people

The volume of water a city uses is hard to put into perspective. The source data uses m³ unit which is equal to 1,000L. In my charts I use the TL (Teralitre) unit, which is: 1,000,000,000,000L.

Does the amount of precipitation correlate with the amount of water used?

The answer: Yes! A good example can be found in 2007. A spike in water usage was a result of the lowest amount of precipitation in the past ten years. The inverse is true. The spike in precipitation in 2006 resulted in a decrease in water usage in the same year.

What part of the city used the most water for the past ten years?

Ward 5 (Etobicoke-Lakeshore) takes the cake.