There are several different ways water can reach towns in different locations and there can be many challenges and reasons behind choosing a certain method in a town’s water supply chain. There are two water companies in my town – being Aqua PA and PA American Water. In my town, the initial source is the Susquehanna River. It is run through water treatment plants before reaching the tab. In the water treatment plant it goes through five treatment steps. These steps being coagulation, sedimentation, filtration, disinfection, and storage. Coagulation removes dirt particles from the water, sedimentation allows the dirt to settle to the bottom so the water becomes cleaner, filtration is where water passes through filters to purify it further, disinfection kills the germs. The water is then sent to reserve for storage. Pipes underground connect the reserve to homes around the town so water can be pumped to the taps. The waste is then expelled to the Joint Sewer Authority that branches between my town and the handful of towns surrounding me.

Shower – 30 minutes – 60 gallons
Brushing Teeth – 2 times – 1.5 gallons
Toilet – 3 times – 4.8 gallons
Washing Hands – 5 times – 4 gallons
Drinking – 10 glasses – 0.625 gallons
Total – 73.925 gallons of water

Using 2 gallons of water a day was not easy, I will admit that I did go slightly over 2 gallons (assuming my math at that point was still correct) at around 11pm when I got really thirsty and had to have some water. I was trying to think of another drink I could have that didn’t have water in it but practically every consumable liquid accessible to me had some amount of water in it – lemonade, iced tea, etc. As someone that takes long showers, approximately 30 minutes on average, my shower covered over 80% of my daily water use. That being said I did not do laundry or dishes the day of my initial “study”. In order to reduce this amount of water use greatly, I did not shower the day of my experiment. Gladly I was sick in bed that day and didn’t do anything but sleep, watch Netflix, and do homework, so I didn’t sweat or smell. The second highest use of water in my day is flushing the toilet. I wasn’t going to not go to the bathroom or make someone else flush for me so I assumed that if I was in Haiti I wouldn’t have a problem going in a hole in the ground without water… Next in order of water use, I washed my hands twice and very quickly not using very much water. As far as drinking water, I limited to only 2 glasses of water until the aforementioned 11pm ‘cheat.’  Lastly, while brushing my teeth I only used water to briefly wet the toothbrush then later wash out the sink. It was tough living on 2 gallons of water and that is with a few ‘cheats’ I’ve mentioned. I would be stretching the truth to say that it was a complete success but I would not consider it an utter failure. While geography has historically been hugely important for a civilization to thrive, modernization and globalization have allowed for infrastructure and technologies to more efficiently store and transfer water from place to place. It is much cheaper for a town laying next to a river to have access to water than a town in the mid-west without a body of water for miles and miles. This difficulty is exaggerated greatly in locations like Haiti that do not have the technology, infrastructure, and funds that we in the United States have access to.