1A – I am from Morrisville PA, which is just 20 minutes north of Philadelphia. Since my home is in such close proximity to a major city, such as Philly, we get our water supply from the same place. There are two water processing plants that produce the water for the great Philly area. The first water plant is the Belmont and Queen Lane plant. This plant takes its water from the Schuylkill river and treats the water for bacteria and other harmful contagions. All of the water treated at this plant is sent into the city. The second one is the Samuel S. Baxter plant, which takes water from the Delaware river and processes it to a usable quality. After all of the water is cleared of all debris, bacteria, etc… it is then pumped out to the city and surrounding suburbs. One of the destinations is the Bucks County Water and Sewer Authority, who test the water again and send it into the county. Once the water is finished being used at a residence/business it travels through sewers back to the Bucks County Water and Sewer Authority.

1B – February 8, 2016

15 Minute Shower = 75 G

Brush Teeth = 0.5 G

Bathroom = 6 G

Hands/Face Wash = 1 G

Drinking Water = 0.25 G

Total = 82.75 G

1C – I am proud to say that I was successful in living a day with only two gallons of water. That being said I am not so confident that anyone would have wanted to be around me while I completed this challenge. My main tactic for conserving water was to cut out my morning shower out of my day completely. this alone drastically reduced my water consumption, but still not enough to bring it down to two gallons. My second tactic, which really helped me, was to go camping the day I was reducing my water consumption. It may sound crazy, since its the middle of February, but my roommate and I were well prepared and up for the challenge. Since I was camping I didn’t have to use a bathroom for my personal needs and basically all of my water consumption was used for drinking and some washing. Even though I was successful in living a day with only two gallons of water, It was difficult and I would not like to do it everyday. It was evident in my experiment that water consumption is based off of availability and lifestyle. Just because we live in a p[art of the world where water is readily available to us doesn’t mean we should keep consuming water a the rate we are.