Water Demand Side

Abstract

The characteristics of the demand for water with regard to both quality and volume, as embedded in the interrelations between supply and demand, can be ascertained by considering the patterns of water withdrawal, and deliveries by and for the basic blocks of users. These include residential customers, public facilities, commercial and industrial users, thermoelectric plants, and farms (for watering livestock and irrigating crops). Relying for illustrative purposes on United States water data for the mid-1980s (see Figure 2.1), we note first that public supply deliveries account for about 8.3 percent of total daily water uses—directed to residential users, and also partly to commercial and industrial customers—while the rest is accounted for by self-supplied withdrawals, as well as by certain amounts of water recycled and reused.