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Comment by steve19 | Hacker News Reader

I don't know how relevant comparing Oslo with a desert city is.

in any case, why is Oslo reducing water usage if it is abundant?

I agree, comparing is probably unfair, but still, 5-6 times higher water consumption is quite a lot and I found the numbers interesting. Actually, most poor people living in deserts around the world use a fraction of the water we use in Oslo.

Population is Oslo is increasing, and the city wants to keep the cost of treating waste water down, and one way is to reduce fresh water use.

I don't think your comparison was unfair. It's impressive that LV has managed to manage\recycle their water as much as they have but to me it is shocking that they still somehow consume 5-6 times as much per capita as Oslo (and, according to some basic searching, much of the EU). Not wanting to turn this into the usual EU\US back-and-forth, but ... man how is it possible to use that much water?

If you're dividing the whole county's water consumption by the county's population to get a usage-per-capita figure, that's going to be incredibly distorted by the Las Vegas strip (hotels [luxury showers and toilets that actually flush], pools, fountains, etc) and related (golf courses). These don't contribute to the denominator, but contribute enormously to the consumption. (If golf and the hotels consume 14% together, that would increase the per-capita consumption by 16%.)

I guess it'd depend on how this is counted. If it is simply "total volume of gallons of water consumed divided by permanently resident population" then your suggestion probably explains the bulk of it. I would have hoped that it'd be measured slightly smarter however.

How many swimming pools are there in Oslo?

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