Water consumption is measured by gallons per year consumed by Lacey, Olympia, and Tumwater water customers. The measure excludes countywide data from other public water suppliers and private wells, for which data is not available. The cities track data somewhat differently, and do not categorize data by residential, commercial, industrial, and agricultural uses.

Perhaps more importantly, we have been unable to determine whether groundwater supplies within the County are adequate to keep up with increasing demand, a key consideration for our future. The decrease in Tumwater in 2004 has been attributed to closure of the brewery.  The long-term trend for Lacey and Tumwater has been a doubling of water consumption over the past 20 years, whereas Olympia has come down from a peak in the early ‘90s and has remained steady over the past ten years. 

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