Water Statistics for Lamar

City of Lamar 6 Million Gallon Water Tank

The Lamar City Council enacted Stage 2 water restrictions on May 14.  There are several more stages, up to level 6, which can be enacted, depending on the amount of available water for Lamar residents and businesses. 

If it comes to pass, Stage 3 through 5 maintains the geographic divisions of watering areas with the city divided east and west of Highway 287 for days of use.  Stage 6 prohibits any outside watering.  Stage 3 limits watering to two days per week with a total of three hours per property, and 15 minutes of watering per area.  Stage 4 only allows watering one time per week each for residents on either side of Highway 287.  Stage 5 regulates watering to only one time per month and each of the restrictions stipulates watering hours during the day. 

A random sampling of water usage from the city’s Water Department shows 22.784 million gallons of water were used in January, and 31.826 million were used in March.  More water will become available to Lamar residents when an Exchange/Transfer with Aurora and CSU allows the city’s project water to be transferred which will lessen water loss during transit and recharge Clay Creek.  The water report for April shows that last year, 17,083,412 cubic feet of water was treated, compared to this past April’s level of 16,620,181 cubic feet. 

There has been little variance, year to date, between the number of city meters in use for residences and commercial operations and rural residential and commercial sales.  City residential meters for this past April are 2,784 compared to 2,781 for last year at this time.  City commercial meters are 537 last month compared to 536 last year at this time.  Rural residential numbers 117 compared to 2012 at 119 and rural commercial is at 20, compared to 21 for 2012.

By Russ Baldwin