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Can someone explain to me why we need to conserve water in a place like New York, where it rains a lot through the year? I am Australian, and it makes sense there (lots of livestock die because we don't have enough water for them, so fair enough.)

Kah, honestly, it's not as crucial in New York as it is in Australia. The NYC water system is quite fascinating--almost all of our water comes from upstate reservoirs. A new tunnel has been under construction since the 1970s and is nearing completion. Sometimes when there is not enough rain, the reservoirs get low. Of course, the population here is growing and there is environmental pressure on the reservoir and watershed system.

There is also the issue of rates: http://preview.tinyurl.com/28jb39

Kah - I live in Louisville, which is on the Ohio River, so we're in a situation where water is plentiful. In cases as ours, conservation isn't about not having a plentiful supply. The concern instead is about taxing the system and the often aging infrastructure. Before water can be sent to your house, it has to cleanse the of turbidity, organic and inorganic chemicals and minerals, parasites, etc. My last water treatment class was two years ago, but I'll go through the process as I remember it...

It is first pumped from the source (resivoir, river, or whatever), then sent through a screen filter to remove large debris, put in a reservoir to allow suspended solids to settle, treated for hardness, chlorinated (or chloramine added), the smaller suspended solids are floculated and allowed to settle, then run through a sand filter, followed by a trip (or several trips) through trickle filters, and then dissenfected. After all this, the water still has to have fluorine added and, depending on local conditions, additional treatments might also have to be used. The process takes several days to complete, though the use of reserviors means the water that comes from your tap might have been withdrawn from its source months prior.

As far as the rates for water go, you're paying less for water per gallon than it costs to process (at least in the US). Most of the money you pay for your water bill goes toward treating waste water, but that's a different story.

While droughts in NYC might not be as common as they are in other areas of the country or world, we do have them (http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/droughthist.html) now and again.

My question is, why WOULDN'T you want to get more out of less? In most situations, really.

We ALL should conserve water - it's the earth's most precious resource. Wars have been waged over it and more will be waged in the future. Let's save what we can!

In Seattle, they recently put up a bunch of the treegator (or something similar) bags on the Ave near the UW to help reduce the wasted water.