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Definition: water supply from Processing Water, Wastewater, Residuals, and Excreta for Health and Environmental Protection: An Encyclopedic Dictionary

(1) The potable water supplied to a community. (2) The sources of water for public or private use. (3) The facilities required for providing water of good quality, under satisfactory pressure, and in adequate quantity for domestic, commercial, industrial, firefighting, and other municipal purposes.


water supply

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
process or activity by which water is provided for some use, e.g., to a home, factory, or business. The term may also refer to the supply of water provided in this way. In the United States, the average residential daily water supply demand is 100 gal (380 liters) per person, although it can go as high as 500 gal (1900 liters) per person. The stringency of the requirements that a supply of water must meet depends on the use to be made of it. For example, water used to wash semiconductor material from which transistors are made must be extraordinarily pure. The more usual requirements, however, are that water be free enough of harmful bacteria, chemicals, and other contamination to be drinkable; free of substances that make its taste or appearance unpleasant; and if the water is to be used for washing, free of salts of calcium and magnesium that will interfere with the action of soap. The basic source of water is rainfall, which collects in rivers and lakes, under the ground, and in…
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Full text Article water supply

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Distribution of water for domestic, municipal, or industrial consumption. Water supply in sparsely populated regions usually comes from underground water rising to the surface in natural springs, supplemented by pumps and wells. Urban sources are deep artesian wells, rivers, and reservoirs, usually…
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Full text Article water supply

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
process or activity by which water is provided for some use, e.g., to a home, factory, or business. The term may also refer to the supply of water provided in this way. In the United States, the average residential daily water supply demand is 100 gal (380 liters) per person, although it can go as…
| 620 words
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Full text Article Water Supply

From The Classical Tradition
In classical antiquity people gathered water from springs and rivers, collected rainwater in cisterns, and dug wells. In addition, the Romans adopted hydraulic technologies from the Etruscans and other sources to build numerous aqueducts in which water flowed from outlying springs to urban centers…
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Full text Article water supply

From Environmental History and Global Change: A Dictionary of Environmental History
From the mid-C19 there has been a major contrast between those cities which were able to provide safe drinking water and those which could not. The sewer systems of London and Paris were constructed partly to reduce disease. From the 1880s filtration plants were used in many European and American…
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Full text Article water-supply system

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Facilities for the collection, treatment, storage, and distribution of water. Ancient systems included wells, storage reservoirs, canals and aqueducts , and water-distribution systems. Highly advanced systems appeared c. 2500 bc and reached their peak in the Roman aqueduct system. In the Middle…
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Full text Article Water Supply

From U.S. Land & Natural Resources Policy: A Public Issues Handbook Full text Article Industry Resources for Land and Natural Resources
Associations 1225 New York Ave NW Suite 450 Washington, DC 20005 202-682-9530 FAX 202-682-9529 E-Mail: mmeade@funoutdoors.com Home Page: www.funoutdoors.com Derrick Crandall, President Catherine Ahern, VP Melinda Meade, Director of Communications A non-profit Washington based federation that…
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Full text Article Water Supply

From 1001 Inventions: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Civilization
Imagine your life today without running water, where you have to walk for miles to a river or well and then contemplate how to get it into your bucket since you cannot get near the fast flow. This was the situation for Muslims before their groundbreaking inventions of water-raising machines and…
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Water Supply
Northern California has abundant rainfall and the Sierra a large snowpack; excess runoff is stored and moved south to supply agriculture and cities in the southern half of the state. California is surprisingly wet. The north lies within the climatic zone of the Pacific Northwest, the center has…
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Full text Article Water Supply and Access

From Global Social Issues: An Encyclopedia
Masai children in remote southwestern Kenya fill...
Water is essential to human existence, as it is to all other living things on earth. Providing adequate supplies of water to human beings and their communities has thus been a source of much legal thought, technical development, political contention, and economic effort over millennia. Humanity's…
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Full text Article Water Supply and Sewers

From Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World: A Companion to the City of Rome Full text Article The Urban Infrastructure
The area of Spes Vetus and the courses of the...
Although Romans tapped natural springs and rivers, dug wells, and collected water in cisterns for drinking and industrial needs, their aqueduct systems are justly considered among the most impressive monuments of their civilization, and those in ancient Rome itself especially so: Pliny the Elder…
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