"According to the City utilities billing office and the Albemarle County Service Authority, residential water use accounts for about 80 percent of the urban area's consumption. But the City does count some commercial entities among its highest users, including UVA and eight public housing sites, as well as 10,000 apartment units.

Two weeks ago, a group of local restaurants, led by OXO, Blue Light, and Rapture formed "Project H2O," in an effort to identify which water conservation measures work best for restaurants. Participants are encouraging all restaurants to voluntarily adopt the same measures -- including the use of paper plates, providing limited drinking water and refusing fountain drink refills, and supplying waterless hand soap in bathrooms -- so that no one restaurant enjoys a competitive advantage by shrinking water restrictions.

City officials have praised project H2O, saying that people inside particular industries are better suited than government officials to find ways to curtail water waste. City Council is hoping that other big water users, like apartment complexes and hotel chains, will organize in a similar manner.

The following is a list of the Top 25 water consumers in the City, as measued by Charlottesville's utilities billing office. The data represents water consumption duing the period between the "Read Date" and September 24. The City's Top 100 users account for 24 percent of all water consumption in the City."

(John Borgmeyer, The C-ville Weekly, October 8-14, 2002).