Water Facts

A continuous leak from a hole this size at an average house-hold water pressure of 60 psi would, over a three month period, result in the waste listed.

A single lawn sprinkler, spraying 5 gaIlons of water per minute, uses more water in an hour than 10 toilet flushes + 2 five-minute showers + 2 dishwasher loads + 1 full washer load of clothes. 300 gallons for the sprinkler, and for all the rest combined... 200 gallons.

A leaky toilet can silently leak 100 gallons of water a day.

Water and carbon dioxide are the two most abundant substances on earth and 4/5 of the earth's surface is covered by water.

Of all the water on earth, only 3% is fresh water, and 2% of this is stored in glaciers and ice-caps... with another 2/3 of 1 % too deep underground to tap. Out of all the water on earth, we wind up with only 1/3 of 1 % available to drink.

The average American uses. 70 gallons of water a day in their home.

The human body is about 70% water.

You can only live approximately 6 days without water.

A cubic foot of water is 7.5 gallons... 100 cubic feet is 750 gallons.

The average family of four uses 1400 gallons of water every five days... enough to fill almost 14,933 12-oz. pop bottles (based on 70 gallons/day/person).

Experts think America's water use will double between 1980 and 2000.

Water is free... it's the processing that costs money. Water should be thought of as a manufactured product

The number 1 consumer of water is irrigated agriculture.

The average family of four uses 102,200 gallons of water a year (based on 70 gallons/day/person).

Maquoketa customers use over 20 million gallons of water every month... and during a hot summer month this can increase by 5 million.

Every car coming off the assembly line represents use of at least 30,000 gallons of water - 20,000 to produce its steel and 10,000 in other aspects of manufacture.

For every gallon of gasoline pumped into our cars, as much as 70 gallons of water was used in the refining process.

About 90% of all the water used by industry is used for 'cooling'.

Industry uses about 1500 gallons of water per person per day. Based on a population of 200,000,000 people in the United States, we are talking about a total U.S. industry daily water use of 300 billion gallons. 300 billion gallons would cover one square mile to a depth of 143 feet, or the height of a 14-story building.

The human body needs about 2-1/2 quarts of water every day ...1-1/2 for drinking and another quart from the water in food.

Water has all sorts of uses in the human body... it regulates body temperature, keeps salt in the body from building up, carries food into body organs, moves waste products from body organs, carries oxygen to body parts, removes carbon dioxide from body parts, and plays an important part in digestion of food.

The most important function of water in the body is cleansing the blood in the kidneys. Fifteen times a day, all the blood passes through the kidneys, where water helps the 'washing'.

A crop of corn releases enough water during its lifetime to cover the field where it grows to a depth of nearly a foot.

Water controls fire because it absorbs heat and prevents oxygen from reaching the fire.

Every second of every day, 16 million tons of water falls somewhere upon the earth.

Nature has a tremendous balancing system... for every drop of water that falls, another evaporates. If this did not happen, we would either drown or die of thirst.

Nature provides us with so much water that if all the mountains and hills were leveled, water would completely cover the earth to a depth of nearly two miles.

If you took all the water out of a 150 lb. human, all you would have left would be about 50 Ibs. of solid matter.

It takes about 122 gallons of water to produce a loaf of bread.

It takes 50 glasses of water to grow the oranges that make up one glass of orange juice.

When you freeze water it expands one-eleventh of its original size... exerting a pressure of 276,000 pounds per square inch (which helps explain why water pipes burst during freezing weather).

When water is boiled into a gas it expands 1642 times its liquid state.

Water in its purest chemical form is not only colorless, but has no taste or odor.

All polluted water can be made safe to drink if it is diluted with enough unpolluted water. Bacteria and toxic chemicals lose heir capability to harm living things if they are sufficiently diluted.

The average price in the United States for safe, clean, drinking water is only $1.03 per thousand gallons... ten gallons for a penny. Compare this to cooking oil about $5.79 per gallons. Milk- $2.50 per gallon. Beer-$4.75per gallon. Whiskey - $30.00 per gallon.

Americans are the world's greatest consumers of fresh water. If you include industrial use, the average consumption of water in the United States is about 1855 gallons per person per day. Our society could not exist without enough clean water.