Jason Brown

1-a.)

I am from a suburb of Pittsburgh in Washington County, PA called Peters Township. My family has one source of water which is provided by the municipality. Peters Township gets the water from the Pennsylvania America Water Company and their website shows that 92% of their water sources are from surface water, 7% comes from wells, and they purchase 1% of the water sources. PAWC services about 650,000 customers and 400 communities in 36 different counties. The Monongahela river is the source of surface water and provides about 110 million gallons of water every day. The PAWC has three main channels that water goes through to get to our taps. First, the water goes through the pumping station where untreated water is removed by large pumps and pipes. Then, raw water is sent to a treatment facility, where the water gets treated and becomes purified to meet the standards of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Finally, the water goes through the distribution system, which is a large network of pipes that span all over in order to reach any house, business, or fire hydrant that is serviced by the company. The water is then able to be used by me in my home.

1-b.)

February 9th

Use                  USGS Rate Estimate              My water usage for today

Shower            5 gallons/min-  10 minutes/2x 100 gallons

Brush teeth      0.3 gallons- 3 times                 0.9 gallons

Toilet               3 gallons/flush-Used 4 times   12 gallons

Handwashing  1 gallon/time-8 times               8 gallons

Drinking          32 oz/water bottle- 2 bottles   .5 gallons

Ending total: 121.4 gallons of water that day.

With the USGS website estimations, I totaled 121.4 gallons of water on Feb 9^th. I see this as pretty accurate because I do less activities at school with water than I would at home. Living in the dorms, I really don’t wash dishes and I didn’t do any laundry on this day for example.

1-c.)

With just two gallons of water, I changed my routine dramatically. I was able to avoid using it to cook by eating at the commons. I drank about.5 gallons of water throughout the day. The rest though was used when I brushed my teeth, washed my hands/face, and flushed the toilet. I was able to not shower though for the day because I didn’t really do any physical activity that made me sweat. I think I went over the 2 gallons limit though by washing my hands and flushing the toilet. I kind of have to do that though. I don’t want to make any one mad in the dorm that I live in and I wanted to keep my hands clean for obvious reason. So I failed this experiment but only for my personal hygiene. I bet if I did it at home, I could pass. This was a lot less water consumption though to my regular day described in part 1-b. I was able to cut back dramatically and see what it is like for other people every day. Geography is very important to water consumption. I never really saw this until my cousins in California started to have problems and we had to send them bottled water. Geography plays a role in how water gets around and it can cut people off from it. This is why people are always creating new systems for more drinkable water to be available.