1A
‘m from Swarthmore PA, which is about 15 minutes north of Philadelphia. Because I love so close to the city, this is where my house gets its water supply. The Philly area has two water processing plants, the Queen Lane/Belmont plant and the Baxter plant. Water from the Schuylkill river is treated for bacteria and other harmful pollution at Queen Lane and then is sent into the city. At the Samuel S. Baxter plant water is taken from the Delaware, cleaned, and sent to the city. Some of this water is sent to the Delaware County Water Authority, where it is tested and dispersed into the county. There are hundreds of thousands of residents in the county served by this water authority. The water goes to my house and other residences in the area, then sewage is sent back to the DelCo Water Authority for treatment.
1B
February 6, 2016
10 Minute Shower = 60 Gallons
Bathroom/Brush Teeth = 8 Gallons
Washing Face/Hands (throughout day)= 3 Gallons
Drinking Water = 1.25 Gallons
Making Coffee= .25 Gallons
Total = 72.5 Gallons of Water
1C
Despite my best attempts, I came nowhere close to using just 2 Gallons of water a day. I ended up using roughly 10 gallons which actually isn’t that bad when compared to the 72.5 used earlier in the week. Priority was given to drinking water first but I drink a ton of water so already half my allowance was gone. After coffee and making pasta, I was above the limit. Unfortunately I needed to visit my girlfriend (aka I had to shower), which drove my water up at least 5 more gallons despite trying to keep it very short. Adding in brushing my teeth and washing hands, I was around 10. What I realized is that I’m basically unwilling to sacrifice any of these activities in my daily life although shortening my shower wasn’t too bad. Shaving in the shower instead of as a separate activity also saved a few gallons. It’s amazing to me that people live on 2 gallons a day in some places. Geography has amazing impacts on peoples lives, if those people had access to more water locally their lives would be greatly improved and they could spend less time surviving and more time doing great things. Overall I’d say it’s impossible to maintain the quality of life in our location without at least 500 gallons a week. While I only used 72.5 in my experiment that did not include things like laundry, filling a mop bucket, and other daily activities that happened to not occur that day. This was very eye opening, experiencing the severe shortage of water in certain parts of the world must be awful.
Hi James, my name is Ben Ceci. We both use roughly the same amount of water per day. I agree that it was a very eye opening experience and I can’t imagine having to live like that everyday. Hopefully we can learn from this experience and try to cut back on the amount of water that we use. If you want to see how I made it through my 2 gallon day, check out my post using the link.
http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/02/10/ben-ceci-module-4-ways-we-use-water/
Hi James,
You made some great points about water and our quality of life. I also found living on 2 gallons a day to be basically impossible. Like you I didn’t do any cleaning or clothes washing, which would have made my total much worse. These kind of activities require so much water that the only solution is to make more efficient machines. It’s amazing how quickly our water usage adds up. If you want, take a look at my blog post. http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/02/10/water-supply-and-my-usage/