Human Impact on Water Resources

There are myriad different ways in which human activities impact our water supply and quality. One harmful practice that we are more accustomed to hearing about is our excessive consumption of water. One of the human activities that use the most amount of water is agriculture. It is estimated that 70% of freshwater around the world is used for agriculture. Water is used for a variety of processes in agriculture, such as irrigation, crop cooling and frost control. Closer to home, toilet flushing uses the most water in our households. Research done by the United States Environmental Protection Agency found that flushing a toilet uses 3 to 7 gallons of water. As we can observe, water is constantly being withdrawn to meet our urban needs.