1a. Water Chain in my hometown:

My hometown is Buckingham Pennsylvania, which located about 50 miles north east of Philadelphia PA. Many people in older homes still have their own wells and sewage tanks, but in the new developments they do have city water and sewage. I called my township to get some information on our water supply chain, and was given a wealth of information. Because we are close to the Delaware River we live in water protected area of the Delaware River Basis. The water actually comes directly for aquifers within the township. My township currently has 15 wells producing more than 245,000,000 gallons of water annually for the residents. Once the water is collected from the aquifer, they pump it through a system where they treat the water by filtering it and then it is put through a purification and disinfection process. They also add Fluoride to the water before they put into water towers for storage purposes until it is ready to be piped to residents. The water is then piped through piping system and delivered to homes. Once residents use water (sewage), it goes down the drains and out to another piping system that carries the waste to local sewage plants. Then the sewage plant treats the sewage before it is released.

 1b. My water usage tracking:

1c. My water conserve experiment:

So I decided to pick Sunday as the day I do my experiment to reduce water consumption to 2 gallons. Sunday I can stay home and be able to manage my consumption to attempt to reduce it. Considering up above in my usage, I use on average approximately 74 gallons a day, going to 2 gallons was a real challenge. My areas to focus on was showering, flushing, hand washing, teeth brushing. So my priority for the day was my drinking water, as it is the most important to me. I set aside ½ gallon for that, so I put that in a container. I happen to have 2 pitchers, so I filled them up, and they totaled 1 and ½ gallon of water. Being able to measure out the water was the best way for me to manage and truly measure my usage. I also had a bottle with a pump for my hand sanitizer. My other strategy was not to flush and I put a little sign on the handle to remind me not to flush. Flushing alone can use up to 2 gallons alone. So was I successful? Well the containers did help me manage my water usage for drinking, brushing, and hand washing. And I only flushed once and that was at the end of the day. By the end of the day I did use all my 2 gallons of water, but I also flushed. So I think I ended up using about 3 gallons. I did use less water than my normal usage outlined in 1b above, but it was really hard.

We take for granted the water we have available. Being in the US and specifically Pennsylvania, we get plenty of rain and thus have a large quantity of fresh water available. We have easy access to clean water as we just go to the facets. Geography has a huge impact on availably of water. Areas that do not get a lot of rain and have droughts having fresh water is like gold to them. Take Haiti for example, there is ground water near the mountains and shore areas, but accessing it as a challenge (cost). Also lack of water treatment plants is an issue. Haiti has also been a country that has been heavily deforested, which has caused heavy soil erosion and impacted rivers and streams.

I have to say my experiment did make me think about my own individual actions any my impact on the environment. Even if I can decrease my usage by 10%, I just think about the impact I could have over the course of weeks, months and years. Making sure I don’t run the water when I brush. If I can talk to more people about it, maybe I can get others be mindful about their water usage and conserve water, collectively we could have a positive impact.