But Mr Stevens said the council should have a strategy that looked at both conserving a "precious resource" and saving the council unnecessary expenditure on pumping more water into the city's reservoir.
He said while the council may have the "tools" to manage demand, that was only part of the equation.
On the figures quoted in the Chronicle, peak usage was up 20 per cent on last year's daily peak. He said the council was paying at least $500,000 a year to pump water from its bores at Kai Iwi to the city reservoirs.
"I assume that means the energy costs are up 20 per cent to generate to supply the new peak (36 million litres). Given those annual pumping costs, an increase of 20 per cent equals $100,000."
Mr Stevens said with a strategy in place the council could be aiming to conserve 20 per cent of the daily draw-off "by various methods" without hindering residents or industry.
The saving could be nearer $200,000 yearly and 3 million litres of water per day," he said.
"We could find ourselves saving thousands of dollars every year by having some simple methods of conserving water use."
More worrying was the fact this peak draw-off was exceeding the consents given the council by Horizons Regional Council, he said.
Those consents let the council draw a total of 35,280 cubic metres or 35.220 million litres a day from the three Kai Iwi bores.
"But a daily draw-off of 36 million litres tells me we're exceeding our consents by 750,000 litres. The council isn't immune to these sorts of consents, so we must do something about it."
Mr Stevens said he was also concerned the council could give no guarantee about a continuing water supply from Kai Iwi because it had no idea how extensive the aquifer the bores tapped into was.
"The only serious thing we've done in the past is to introduce sprinkler or hosing bans and that's it.
"I don't want to sound like a greenie, but we should be worried that we have no idea how long our supply from Kai Iwi will last.
"This is a resource we want to be saving. Instead we're just standing by and letting it go down the drains," he said.