Protect Your Groundwater Day

Protect your Groundwater Day – September 4!

Here are some great tidbits of information:

– The average person in the US uses 80-100 gallons of water per day

– Each toilet flush uses 3 gallons

– Each shower uses 2-5 gallons per minute

– Americans uses 25-40 gallons of water on laundry

– Washing your hands uses approximately 1 gallon of water

– Only 1% of the water on Earth is usable; 99% of which is underground

– The US uses 349 BILLION gallons of fresh water every day

– Groundwater is 20 to 30 times larger than all US lakes, streams, and rivers combined

– 44% of the US population depends on groundwater for its drinking water supply

– Groundwater accounts for 33% of all water used by US municipalities

– More than 13.2 million households have their own well, representing 34 million people

– 53.5 billion gallons of groundwater are used for agriculture irrigation each day. In 1990, that number was 2.2 billion

– The largest US aquifer is Ogallala, underlying 250,000 square miles stretching from Texas to South Dakota. Scientists estimate it could take 6,000 years to naturally refill the aquifer if it were ever fully depleted

– California pumps 10.7 billion gallons of groundwater each day, a third more than the second-highest state: Texas

– Groundwater is the world’s most extracted raw material with withdrawal rates in the estimated range of 259 trillion gallons per year