Blacksburg-Christiansburg-VPI Water Authority

	Did you know? The average toilet uses 5 to 7 gallons of water per flush. A shower can use 25 to 50 gallons (5 gallons per minute). Just washing your hands can use up to 3 gallons of water (with tap running at 3 gallons per minute). Leaving the water running while you brush your teeth can waste 3 gallons of water (at 3 gallons per minute). Outdoor spigots can pump out 5 to 10 gallons per minute. Automatic dishwashers use about 15 gallons per load. Washing one load of clothes in an automatic washer uses about 45 gallons. The average bath takes about 36 gallons of water. The average individual uses about 125 gallons of water per day. An average residence uses 107,000 gallons of water per year. About 340 billion gallons of water are used every day in the United States. This total includes water used in irrigation, in industry, and in fire fighting and street cleaning. It takes about 1 gallon of water to process a quarter pound of hamburger. It takes 1,500 gallons of water to process 1 barrel of beer. It takes 39,000 gallons of water to manufacture a new car, including tires. It takes about 800,000 gallons of water to grow an acre of cotton. Ten gallons of water are needed to refine one gallon of gasoline. Cutting one minute off your shower time can save about 700 gallons of water per month. A faucet that drips 60 times in one minute would waste over 3 gallons a day, 1,225 gallons per year. Humans require about 2 1/2 quarts of water a day. A human can live morethan a month without food but only as much as one week without water.
	Did you know? 80 percent of the earth's surface is water. 97 percent of the earth's water is seawater. 2 percent of the earth's water supply is locked in icecaps and glaciers. 1 percent of the earth's water is available for drinking. About 60 percent of the weight of the human body is water. An elephant is 70 percent water. A tomato is 95 percent water. An egg is about 74 percent water. A watermelon is about 92 percent water. A piece of lean meat is about 70 percent water. Fresh, uncompacted snow is usually 90-95 percent trapped air.
	Did you know? At sea-level pure water freezes into ice at 32 F (0 C). At sea-level pure water boils into steam at 212 F (100 C). Seawater freezes at about 28 F (-2 C). A cubic foot of water weighs 62.4 pounds. A gallon (231 cubic inches) of water weighs about 8 1/3 pounds. Seawater is usually about 3 1/2 percent heavier than fresh water because it contains about 35 pounds of salts in each 1,000 pounds of water. The pressure a mile down in the ocean is more than 2,300 pounds per square inch. Water expands by nearly one tenth of its volume when it freezes. 1 cubic foot of water becomes 1.09 cubic feet of ice. When a cubic foot of water at sea-level pressure boils away, it becomes about 1,700 cubic feet of steam.
	Did you know? The water we use today is the same water the dinosaurs used. A fully grown oak tree may transpire about 100 gallons (380 liters) of water a day. In summer an acre of corn transpires from 3,000 to 4,000 gallons (11,360 to 15,140 liters) of water each day. Once evaporated, a water molecule spends ten days in the air. Every 24 hours about 250 cubic miles of water evaporates from the sea and the land.
	Did you know? The earth's oceans cover about 140,500,000 square miles and contain almost 330,000,000 cubic miles of water. Scientists estimate that there may be enough ground-water in North America to cover the continent with a sheet of water almost 100 feet (30 meters) thick. The tallest waterfall in the world is Angel Falls (Venezuela) with a total drop of 3,212 feet (980m). River that carries most water in the world is the Amazon River (South America) which discharges about 4 million cubic feet every second into Atlantic Ocean. That's about 8 trillion gallons per day! The longest river in the world is the Nile River (Africa) at 4,145 miles (6,670km). The world's shortest river is the Roe River in Montana at 201 feet long. The deepest and oldest lake in the world is Lake Baikal (Siberia) at 6,365 ft. (1,940 m) deep and 25 million years old Lake Baikal holds one-fifth of the earth's available fresh water. The largest ocean in the world is the Pacific Ocean at 64 million sq. miles (166 million sq. km). The worlds largest(surface area) freshwater lake is Lake Superior (North America) with an area of 32,000 sq. miles (82,103 sq. km). Tutunendo, Columbia is the world's wettest place with an average rainfall of 463.4 inches (annual mean). The world's driest place is Desierto de Atacama (near Calma , Chile ). It remained almost rainless for about 400 years (to 1971).
	Did you know? Irrigation was developed in 5000 BC. The Romans constructed their first aqueducts in about 312 BC. Forty-eight million people in the United States receive their drinking water from private or household wells. Nearly 2 percent of U.S. homes have no running water. The total miles of pipeline and aqueducts in the US/Canada is approximately 1 million miles, enough to circle the earth 40 times. There are 58,900 community public water supply systems in the US. Chlorine was first used in the United States to sterilize city water in 1908.
	Did you know? Four quarts of oil can cause an eight-acre oil slick if spilled or dumped down a storm sewer. One gram of 2,4-D (a common household herbicide) can contaminate 2.6 million gallons (10 million liters) of drinking water.
	Did you know? Like the Nile, the New River flows from south to north. The New River is fairly warm with temperatures ranging from about 55 degrees(F) in April up to 80 degrees(F) in August. One of the oldest rivers in North America it can be traced to the Jurassic period, around 180 million years ago when it formed the headwaters of a now-extinct river that geologists call the Teays. The New River is about 250 miles long, beginning in North Carolina and ending in West Virginia where it joins the Gauley River .
*References*
America's Wild and Scenic Rivers, 1983, National Geographic Society 1990 Guinness Book of World Records, Guinness Publishing Ltd. Parfit, Michael, 1993, National Geographic Special Edition, Water: National Geographic Magazine, November 1993. Belt,Don,1992Russia'sLake Baikal, The World's Great Lake: National Geographic Magazine, June 1992, p. 2-39. Dr. James M. Symons, 1994, Plain Talk About Drinking Water, Second Edition: American Water Works Association Compton�s Interactive Encyclopedia, Copyright 1994, 1995 Compton�s NewMedia, Inc. New River Gorge National River, http://www.nps.gov/neri/home.htm Metro Waternet - Water Use FAQ,http://www.nashville.org/ws/h2o_use.html CWD - Cambridge Water Department; Drinking Water Facts, http://www.ci.cambridge.ma.us/~Water/trivia.html U.S. Geological Survey; Weekly Water Fact, http://waisqvarsa.er.usgs.gov/public/watuse/weekly/april96.html