The water in the nation's rivers, streams, creeks, lakes, and reservoirs are vitally important to our everyday life. The main uses of surface water include drinking-water and other public uses, irrigation uses, and for use by the thermoelectric-power industry to cool electicity-generating equipment. The majority of water used for thermoelectric power, public supply, irrigation, mining, and industrial purposes came from surface-water sources. Of all the water used in the United States in 2000 (about 408 billion gallons per day (Bgal/d), fresh and saline), over 79 percent (387 Bgal/d) came from surface-water sources. Water from ground-water sources accounted for the remaining 21 percent. Over 80 percent of all water used in 2000 was freshwater, although saline water was heavily used in the thermoelectric-power industry, and, to a lesser extent, for industrial and mining purposes.
The map below shows surface-water withdrawals, by State, for 2000.
[D] - Data for the pie chart are available.
About 74 percent of the freshwater used in the United States in 2000 came from surface-water sources. The other 26 percent came from ground water. Surface water is an important natural resource used for many purposes, especially irrigation and public supply (supplying people with drinking water and for everyday uses).
[D] - Data for this bar chart are available.
For 2000, most of the fresh surface-water withdrawals, 52 percent, was used in the thermoelectric-power industry to cool electricity-generating equipment. Water used in this manner is most often returned to the water bodies it was taken from. That is why the more significant use of surface water is irrigation, which used about 31 percent of all fresh surface water, but, ignoring thermoelectric-power withdrawals, irrigation accounted for about 63 percent of the Nation's surface water withdrawals. Public supply and industry were the next largest users of surface water.
The pie charts below show the percentage of fresh ground water that was used in 2000 for various categories of water use. For most categories, surface water is used more than ground water, although this pattern varies geographically across the United States. Domestic (self-supplied) water use is almost exclusively ground water, whereas the water used to produce electricity comes totally from surface water (most of this water is used to cool equipment and often is a "pass-through" process).
Sources and more informationEstimated Use of Water in the United States in 2000, USGS Circular 1268:
• Surface-water withdrawals by water-use category (data table)
• Total, surface-water, and ground-water withdrawals (maps)
U.S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
URL: http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/wusw.html
Page Contact Information: Howard Perlman
Page Last Modified: Friday, 07-Nov-2008 15:47:16 EST
