Water Conservation Tools Script.doc

Water Conservation for Local Governments and Citizens
A Narrative Guide
Title Slide Today we are going to talk about water conservation: what it means, why we should practice it, and the many ways that local governments and individuals can save water and protect our environment.
We Depend On Clean Water Daily We all have a need for clean water, and Americans use a lot of it. It is estimated that 372 billion gallons of water are used every day in our country. In ia, we use almost 6 billion gallons per day. Over half of that is used as cooling water for power plants, but the rest is used by individuals, on farms, and by industries. Everyone needs to know 3 simple facts about water conservation: water is a limited resource, water costs a great deal in energy and money to store, pump and purify, and water consumption can be reduced significantly for all of these uses.
How Much Water Does One Person Need? It is interesting to look at how people use water in their homes, so we can determine the best way to conserve it. We know that the average person needs anywhere from 100 to 150 gallons a day (depending on how this is calculated. This is not just water for drinking, bathing and toilet flushing, but also includes water for lawns and landscaping (especially in the summer), washing machines, dish washers and more. When we look at this pie chart, we see that the biggest uses are for outdoor watering, followed by toilets, clothes washing, showers, and faucets. We e back to these uses when we talk later about how to conserve water.
ia Water Sources Let's look at where our es from and why there is a real need to conserve it. Most people in ia get their water from surface water, meaning streams, rivers, lakes and reservoirs. The rest get their water from ground water, which means munity or individual wells. This does not mean that there are more surface water sources than wells, but rather that many large population centers like Atlanta, Augusta and Columbus use water from