I live in Pine Township, which is located about 20 minutes north of Pittsburgh. My township contracts our water services out to the West View Water Authority. They provide water for over 200,000 people in the Pittsburgh area. The West View Water Authority treatment plant is located on Neville Island. The plant obtains its water from the Ohio River and treats it using granular activated carbon among other chemicals. After treatment, the water is pumped to one of 11 reservoirs located in their area of operation. From here the water is pumped into the Pine Township water storage tank. The water storage tank is necessary because water is delivered by utilizing gravity. When I turn on a tap or take a shower, gravity allows the water to flow down from the water tank, through a series of pipes and out my faucet. From here the water goes down the drain and enters a series of pipes that take it to a wastewater treatment plant. My wastewater treatment plant is located in the neighboring township of Cranberry. The wastewater plant process the water using both physical process and chemicals. After treatment it is released into Brush Creek.
I failed in my attempt to live on two gallons of water for a day. My usage was roughly 5 gallons. The night before my attempt, I made a plan detailing my water usage for the entire day. I used water for drinking, washing, brushing, toilet flushing, and dishwashing. The largest portion of my daily water usage comes from showering. We have an older shower that uses roughly 5 gallons per minute. This would have blown me through my 2 gallon goal, so I took a shower the night before to eliminate my largest usage of water. For my other activities, I consciously used as little water as possible. Flushing the toilet is my second largest usage of water and I planned around this to minimize its impact. I only used the facilities on campus, which are more efficient. I also used the urinal as much as possible. Despite not meeting my goal, I did substantially reduce my water usage compared to the total calculated in 1-b. I can imagine the challenge of living in an area that does not receive adequate precipitation. In order for a sustainable future, we need to build in areas with a reliable water supply.
Hi Chris. My a name is Adam Abbott and I’m a senior in IST. I think you put a lot of effort into planning and executing your experiment of using on 2 gallons of water. I never thought to consider that the toilets on campus are probably more efficient than the one at my apartment. I think you tried harder than I did. I also took a shower the night before to cut out the one day I wasn’t going to shower, but in the end isn’t that almost like showering in the morning anyways? Unless you ended up waiting until the morning after your experiment to shower you may not have actually cut out a day of showering. Especially if you technically showered twice before the day of your experiment (once in the morning and once at night). I think you did a great job on this!
If you would like to look at my post the link is here: http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/02/10/module-4-hometown-water-supply-and-water-usage/
Hi, I’m Jim and here is a link to my blog post for this unit http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/02/10/shaud-water-usage/
I really enjoyed your chart and I realized that not doing the dishes the day of my experiment really impacted my results to be low. I respect that you managed to live on 5 gallons, closest I got was 10. Totally agree that a sustainable future involves reliable water supplies.