Water, Water Everywhere

I am feeling especially guilty today. Why? Because I learned that I use an unconscionably high percent of New York's water supply.

Here's the line that has me worried:

"One is the Croton Water Filtration Plant in the Bronx, which will provide up to 290 gallons a day of filtered water — up to 30 percent of the city’s water needs — from the Croton watershed in Westchester and Putnam Counties."

So by my calculation, this means that the city needs about 966.7 gallons of water a day. Now, that's a lot of water - in fact, it's impossible to picture that much water, just as it's impossible to imagine what $1 million would look like. It's a good thing New York is in a high-precipitation region. Think how difficult it would be to procure 966.7 gallons a day in a dry region like southern California.

Here's the thing, though. I probably use an average of 30-40 gallons a day. There's my shower, obviously, but also drinking water, cooking water, laundry, dishes, etc. This means that I use 3-4% of New York's water every day. In a city of 100 people, no one person should be using more than about 1% of the city's water on any given day. I'm way over my share - in fact, I'm using as much water as 3-4 New Yorkers, on average.

And that's assuming that New York City has a population of 100. To be more accurate, we would have to use its actual population, which is over 8 million.