On the Grid A Plot of Land, an Average Neighborhood, and the Systems that Make our World Work
Wires, pipes, roads, and water support the lives we lead, but the average person doesn't know where they go or even how they work. Our systems of infrastructure are not only shrouded in mystery, many are woefully out of date. In On the Grid, Scott Huler takes the time to understand the systems that sustain our way of life, starting from his own quarter of an acre in North Carolina and traveling as far as Ancient Rome.
People rarely think about it, but the freshwater and the stormwater you work to keep from flooding your yard are actually the same thing; freshwater is just upstream stormwater. (Here's a page from the National Academies that helps make that clear: http://water.nationalacademies.org/basics_part_2.shtml.)
My local water comes from Falls Lake, held back by Falls Dam, built and maintained by the Army Corps of Engineer. Here's a video explaining how they look after it.
Once a dam gets a whole bunch of water hanging around in a reservoir, cities use it for water supply. Here's a frankly pretty crappy video that walks you through the water treatment process for Raleigh. It gives a lot of good information about how a plant works, but it can be pretty hard to watch.
http://raleigh.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?publish_id=19
Water makes its way to our homes through thousands of miles of pipes (per city -- Raleigh has more than 2000 miles of pipes), where we use it mostly to run down the drain while we stand by the sink brushing our teeth, right? Use this water calculator http://www.chelanpud.org/water-use-calculator.cfm
to get a sense of how much water you use per day. The USGS estimates average per person use at around 100 gallons per day.
The American Water Works Association is an industry group, and here's plenty of info from them:
