Water

People in the USA use more than TWICE the amount water per day per person as people in Mexico and FOUR TIMES as much as those in Germany. See the bar chart below. While we hear about modern-day “water wars” among states such as Georgia, Tennessee, and Florida, we believe that there is no real water shortage. We do think that there may be a lack of proper water usage.

Source of data: OECD (2015), “Water: Freshwater Abstractions”, OECD Environment Statistics (database).
For more information, see https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=WATER_ABSTRACT

Per the US Geological Survey, we in the USA use 355,000 million gallons of water per day, as of 2010. Based on how we use water, we may have a huge opportunity to improve the use of our water resources. We currently:

• Heat a lot of water at power plants (Almost 50% of water used)
• Use a lot of water in irrigation (About 33%)
• Use water in daily living – drinking, bathing and watering lawns (About 12%)
• Waste a lot of water via our voracious use and leaky pipes
• Pollute a lot of water through allowing fertilizers, herbicides and sewerage into our aquifers and waterways
• Contaminate a lot of water via problems with our fresh water distribution system, etc. (Washington, D.C. and Flint, MI are two examples.)

Source: US Geological Survey, Water Use in the United States
For more info see, https://water.usgs.gov/watuse/wuto.html

We believe that there is plenty of water for everyone in the USA. We also think that everyone should be able to swim in, drink from and eat fish from our streams, rivers, lakes and oceans without fear of health or safety problems caused by human activity.

We believe that water is our most reusable and recyclable resource. All we have to do is use it well, keep it clean and let the water cycle work. There are many ways in which we could make better use of our water, but a few are: use less electricity, reduce the size of your lawn, and install water-efficient plumbing fixtures.

We support the Chattahoochee River Keeper.