"My Water Will Go On (and on)" and the Masters (of Water) Champion

From Rachel Simmonsen in the Palm Beach Post...

Rachel details water use in Martin and St. Lucie County in Florida. The editor of the LBP referred to water usage with their title. But Huffington Post referred to the article with the clever but pejorative title "water wasters". As long as the water isn't being subsidized (as it often is for farmers-- for example, in California), it's more difficult to critique the use...

While most residents use fewer than 10,000 gallons a month, utility records show that some of the Treasure Coast's most water-hungry residents use more than 15 times that amount.

The biggest users live along Martin County's coastline, including wealthy Jupiter Island, where homeowners use up to 1.6 million gallons a month - more than 250 times the average amount used by residential customers served by Martin County utilities.

For the 12 months that ended in March, the title of top water-guzzler went to Renlec Management, the Montreal-based company of Canadian singer Celine Dion, who owns 5.7 acres in the island town. In a year, the property used about 6.5 million gallons of water, or enough to fill a 50-gallon bathtub about every four minutes.

Representatives of Dion's company didn't respond to requests to comment on water use at the site, where an old house has been razed to make way for a 9,800-square-foot home under construction....

Golfer Tiger Woods' 12-acre Jupiter Island estate, where a home is under construction, used about 3.7 million gallons of water in that period, averaging about 310,700 gallons a month. Much of that went to irrigating new landscaping and large native trees, which had to be transplanted, according to an e-mail from Christopher Hubman, who serves on the board of Woods' charitable foundation.

Plans call for an on-site reverse osmosis facility that would eliminate the need for utility water for irrigation, he said....

Even the Treasure Coast's biggest water users seem to be cutting back. From April 2007 through March, golfer Greg Norman used about 525,900 gallons a month at his Jupiter Island estate, a drop of about 71,600 gallons from his monthly average the year before. Norman's lawyer, Jack Schneider, declined to comment on his client's water use.

Another Jupiter Island resident, Mike Kittredge, used about 151,000 gallons a month from April 2007 through March, a drop from about 653,200 gallons the year before. Now he's considering a new surface for his clay tennis court, which he said accounts for about a third of the water use.

"I don't want to be on that list this year," said Kittredge, founder of the Yankee Candle Co.

Real estate agent Patrick Stracuzzi also cut back on his water use, but not enough to lose the title of biggest residential water user in unincorporated Martin County. In the 12 months that ended in March, Stracuzzi's St. Lucie Boulevard home near Stuart used about 192,800 gallons a month, about 134,000 fewer gallons than his monthly average the year before.

"When I shower, I turn the water on and off," Stracuzzi said. "I'm dead serious. Even something silly, like when I'm brushing my teeth, I turn the water on and off."...

Typically, a two-member household in Port St. Lucie uses about 5,000 gallons a month, while a four-member household uses about 9,000 gallons monthly, according to utility officials....