Some facts and figures about our national water supply

• According to the Environmental Protection Agency, our nation's 56,000+ community water systems have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to build drinking water treatment and distribution systems and another $22 billion per year to operate and maintain them.
  
• There are approximately 1 million miles of pipelines and aqueducts that carry water in the United States and Canada. That's long enough to circle the earth 40 times.
  
• Public water suppliers process about 38 billion gallons of water each day for domestic and public use.
  
• More than 79,000 tons of chlorine are used every year to treat water supplies in the US and Canada.
  
• Of all the earth's water, 97 percent is salt water found in oceans and seas; 1 percent is fresh water available for drinking; and 2 percent is currently frozen.
  
• Scientists say that water is recycled by nature over and over; there is no new water being made. That means we have the same amount of water now as when the earth was formed.
  
• About two thirds of the human body is made up of water; 70 percent of the skin is water, and blood is 80-90 percent water.
  
• The first municipal water filtration works opened in Paisley, Scotland in 1832.
  
• More than 13 million households get their water from their own private wells and are responsible for treating and pumping the water themselves.
  
• About 800,000 water wells are drilled each year in this country for domestic, farming, commercial and water testing purposes.
  
• The US average daily requirement for fresh water is about 40 billion gallons a day, with another 300 billion gallons used untreated for agriculture and commercial purposes.
  
• Every man, woman and child in this country uses about 100 gallons of water a day at home.
  
• We can survive for about a month without food, but for only 5 to 7 days without water.
  
• On average, households use about 50 percent of their water for lawn sprinkling. Toilets use the most water inside, consuming about 27 gallons per person per day.
  
• The average 5 minute shower sends about 15 to 25 gallons of water down the drain, but an automatic dishwasher uses only 9 to 12 gallons to clean a load of dishes.
  
• You can refill an 8 oz. glass with water approximately 15,000 times for the same cost as a six-pack of soft drinks.
  
• If every household in the US had a faucet that dripped once each second, we would waste 928 million gallons of water a day.