"Doug Lassiter" wrote in message
om...
"RoyDMercer" wrote in message
...

Water conservation is as much about output as it is capacity. Let's say
everyone in a large city waters their lawn only once per week, but
everyone
does it on the same day. It's easy to see the system would quickly get
overwhelmed. However if the watering is distributed equally over the
entire
week, the same amount of water is being used, but the system is not
being
overwhelmed.


Good point (but not one that the city ever bothers to make!) But one
would think that if everyone watered pretty much at random,
fluctuations like this would not be that serious. True that on
weekends and holidays one might see more sprinklers in action because
people may have more flexibility. Are there days of the week that flow
volumes from the treatment plants are certifiably larger?

Probably not and it's not really a mater of how much the treatment plants
are producing. The way most metropolitan and suburban water systems work is
they pump water into water towers and the water towers distribute the water
into the grid. When the water useage gets greater than the capacities of
the water towers can handle, more water towers must be built. So usually
where the problems come in is in the number and size of water towers you
have, not the output of the treatment plants.