The Lower Nooksack Subbasin is comprised of a variety of land and water uses both agricultural and nonagricultural. The water uses, described in this chapter include municipal, industrial, residential, and commercial. The following analysis of nonagricultural water use is divided into three sections: municipal/industrial, residential, and commercial/industrial.

The utilities that serve municipal/industrial customers in the Lower Nooksack Subbasin include the City of Bellingham, the City of Everson, the City of Ferndale, the City of Lynden, and the PUD #1 of Whatcom County. For these utilities, large municipal user water system records were obtained for years 2007 through 2011. Averages for this five year period were used in the model for water use, return flows, and interbasin transfers. The average annual diversion by the large utilities municipalities in our analysis totals nearly 25 cfs, 82% of which are transferred out of the Nooksack basin. The majority of that water serves Cherry Point industries; a small amount serves out-of-basin irrigators.

Residential, or domestic, water use was estimated according to population. Population and per capita water use rates are the foundation for calculating an average daily residential water use for each drainage in the Lower Nooksack Subbasin. 2010 Census geospatial census data were used to calculate the population for each drainage. The 2010 population for the Lower Nooksack Subbasin was 46,204, up 8,345 since the 2000 census. A per capita demand rate of 88 gallons per capita per day was agreed upon by the WRIA 1 Joint Board Staff Team to use as input along with the new population numbers. Seasonal demand factors were also determined to distribute monthly water use such that maximum demand occurred in the summer months and minimum demand in the winter.

Businesses and other operations that are not supplied water by a municipality are either served by a smaller public water system or are self-supplied. For commercial users not within the service area of the municipalities listed above, water use was estimated based on average use rates agreed on in 2003 with the WRIA 1 Water Quantity Technical Team. Commercial use was based on the type of operation identified in the Whatcom County Assessor records.

This resource is a subset of the Lower Nooksack Water Budget (LNWB) Collection Resource.