1a.) South Bend, Indiana Water Supply
My hometown is South Bend, Indiana, which ironically, is in Northern Indiana, about an hour and a half east of Chicago and home of the University of Notre Dame. South Bend gets its water from the South Bend Water Works, which maintains 32 deep wells and uses over 545 miles of water main (water pipe lines) in order to deliver water to businesses and households. These wells are the source of water and is the network of water main used to distribute water in a distribution system. Every street has a water main in the street that serves water through all the neighborhoods, and each building has smaller pipes connected to the water main, called a service line, that supplies water to individual households/companies. In 2008, South Bend installed an array of intelligent sensors in an effort to increase efficiency of the sewer system. This allows for South Bend to migrate its sewer system to the cloud, thus preventing polluted water from going into the river and thus saving hundreds of millions in new pipes. Fun fact is that South Bend was the first city in the world to do this. After water is used within a household, South Bend has a combined sewer overflow (CSO) system which captures waste from homes, businesses, and storm water thats streamed from street sewers, including gutter downspouts. Then, once theres a large amount of rainfall, the CSO system becomes overwhelmed and overflows and sends raw sewage into the St. Joseph River.
1b.) Monday!
Flushing the toilet 3 gallons
Washing my hands 1 gallon
Brushing my teeth 2 gallons
Taking a shower (20 mins) 100 gallons
Shaving my legs 1 gallon
Filling up my water bottle 24 oz = 0.1875 gallons
Flushing the toilet 2 3 gallons
Washing my hands 2 1 gallon
Filling up my water bottle 2 0.1875 gallons
Flushing the toilet 3 3 gallons
Washing my hands 3 1 gallon
Brushing my teeth 2 gallons
Washing my face 1 gallon
Total water used – 118.375 gallons
1c.) Tuesday!
Today, I tried to live on only two gallons of water for the day. Seeing that a huge majority of my water usage went to showering, I did not take a shower today. This cut me down to only 18.375 gallons to cut down. I also did not shave my legs again, so that cut me down to 17.375. I realized I could reduce my water use if I mainly, did not flush the toilet, and basically just watched my water usage while doing daily hygienic tasks, such as washing my hands, brushing my teeth, and washing my face. To cut down on flushing, I actually did not flush for the day (so sorry to the girls I share the communal bathroom with in my dorm). This reduced my usage to 8.375. To was able to cut 3 gallons from this by not washing my hands after bathroom usage but instead using hand sanitizer and then another gallon by not washing my face at the end of the night by using a wipe. At this point, I was at 4.375 for my usage. I only filled up water once that day and then just brushed my teeth in the morning and did not at night before going to bed. My total use was 2.1875 gallons of water a day. I consider this success, however, realize is very unhygienic and now understand how difficult it truly is to live off so little when the day before I had used so much. Geography matters in water usage because of the tragedy of the commons. Water usage is the same concept where individuals, especially the United States, seen within the water usage chart, acts selfishly in order to maximize our own personal gains – we overuse water while other countries are restricted on their use. Thus, we can undertake individual action in order to decrease our water usage. Like my hometown, we can also take collective action to install sensors that reduce pollution, which helps the environment and allows for government tax money to be saved by the millions in order to work on other important initiatives.