Where does our household water come from?

Question

Where does our household water come from?

Answer 1

Where do you live?  It really depends.  maybe you have a well, maybe there is a municipal well, maybe you are part of an area serviced by a large watershed.

Here in southern NY, we (we as in the 5 Boroughs of NYC as well as Westchester and Putnam counties) get our water from the New York City Watershed.  This watershed is spread across 8 counties and provides us with about 1.4 Billion (with a B) gallons of water each and every day.

http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/25599.html

Answer 2

If you have any of these things :  Water softener, Iron Filter, a 2", 4" or 5" pipe sticking out of your yard then you have a Well...Most new wells use what they call submersible pumps that are actually under ground in your well casing.  There are other pumps which would most likely be in a pump house or in your basement/crawl space which is called a Jet pump.  If you have a well, the well driller will dig down in the ground until they find a large supply of water.  The distances range from 10 feet all the way to 200 ft.   This water then gets sucked up by your pump into your house, into a holding tank.  Which then gets filtered.  Now if you don't have any of this, you are hooked up to your cities water supply which comes pre filtered and treated...And you would not have any of the things that i have listed before.

Answer 3

Rain if we don't get rain we run out of water.

Answer 4

All of the water that we use in our homes comes from either a ground-water source, such as a well, or from a surface-water source, such a river, lake, or reservoir. In the U.S. in 2000, about 240 million of the 285 million people in the United States got their home water delivered by a public supplier, such as the county water department. At other homes, people provide water for themselves from sources, such as a well, a cistern, a pond, or a stream.

Answer 5

Every city negotiates it's own source.  You would have to ask in your own city to know the exact source.