U.S. water consumption declining
By Dale Rodebaugh, Durango (Colo.) Herald
The use of water, fresh and saline, in the United States in 2010 was the lowest in 45 years, a U.S. Geological Survey report says.
“The 45-year low shows the positive trends in conservation that stem from improvements in water-use technologies and management,” the report said.
In 2010, the latest data available, overall use of water, fresh and saline, was 365 billion gallons a day, the report said. This is a 13 percent reduction in use compared with a total of 410 billion gallons a day in 2005, which itself was the lowest annual use since before 1970.
Bottom line from the article. Agriculture uses ten times the water as all other uses combined. So where did the reductions take place?
What salt water is used is not explained in the full article. Other than cooling power plants near the coast what other use can it be?
100 billion gallons a day of fresh water flow into the Pacific ocean from the Columbia River. Why not recover some of this fresh water for drought plagued
California?