What is a watershed?
http://www.conservationinformation.com/?action=learningcenter_kyw_whatisawatershed

From the Environmental Protection Agency: How Do We Use Water?
http://www.epa.gov/owm/water-efficiency/water/save/use.htm
Water is the essential ingredient for many aspects of daily life, from personal use to agricultural, industrial, and commercial needs. The amount of water used is usually defined in terms of withdrawal—in other words, water that is collected from the Earth's surface or extracted from ground water. There are four major categories of water users in the United States:

• Domestic: Water used for residential, commercial, industrial, and public uses such as street cleaning, fire fighting, municipal parks, and public swimming pools. This includes both publicly supplied sources (water delivered by a public or private system) and self-supplied sources (water withdrawn directly from surface or ground water, such as from privately owned wells). Fifteen percent of American households are self-supplied, while more than 240 million people depend on public supply systems. Withdrawals for public supply systems total more than 43 billion gallons per day. Historically, nearly 60 percent of the public supply is delivered to households. Self-supplied water to households totals nearly 4 billion gallons per day.
• Power Plants: Water used during the production of energy from fossil fuels, nuclear, or geothermal sources. Most water withdrawn for power plants is used for cooling purposes; power plants use 136 billion gallons of fresh water per day.
• Agricultural: Water used to irrigate farm crops and for livestock, dairies, feedlots, fish farms, and other farm needs. Agricultural irrigation accounts for more than 142 billion gallons of fresh water per day.
• Industrial & Mining: Water used for cooling in factories and washing and rinsing in manufacturing processes. Some of the major water-use industries include mining, steel, paper, and associated products, as well as chemicals and associated products. Industrial facilities withdraw more than 20 billion gallons of fresh water per day.

How Does Excessive Water Use Affect Water Quality?
http://www.epa.gov/owm/water-efficiency/water/save/water_quality.htm

Save Water, Save Energy
http://www.epa.gov/owm/water-efficiency/water/benefits.htm
It takes a considerable amount of energy to deliver and treat the water you use everyday. American public water supply and treatment facilities consume about 56 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year—enough electricity to power more than 5 million homes for an entire year. For example, letting your faucet run for five minutes uses about as much energy as letting a 60-watt light bulb run for 14 hours. By reducing household water use you can not only help reduce the energy required to supply and treat public water supplies but also can help address climate change. In fact:

• If one out of every 100 American homes retrofitted with water-efficient fixtures, we could save about 100 million kWh of electricity per year—avoiding 80,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions. That is equivalent to removing nearly 15,000 automobiles from the road for one year!
• If 1 percent of American homes replaced an older toilet with a high-efficiency toilet (HET), the country would save more than 38 million kWh of electricity—enough to supply more than 43,000 households electricity for one month.

Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2000
In the year 2000, the last year for which figures are available, 48 percent of the available water went to the production of electricity. Click here to find out where our water is consumed. http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/2004/circ1268/htdocs/figure01.html

Bottled Water
Stay off the bottle: In most first-world countries, the tap water is provided by a government utility and is tested regularly. Taste tests have shown that in many municipalities, tap water actually tastes better. Bottled water is not as well regulated and studies have shown that it is not even particularly pure. Not only is it more expensive per gallon than gasoline, bottled water incurs a huge carbon footprint from its transportation, and the discarded bottles cause pollution. In 2004 the average American used approximately 200 bottled waters per year, and this number is only increasing. (http://www.worldwater.org/data20062007/Table12.pdf) To curb bottled water waste, buy a reusable water bottle, like a Nalgene, and use a water filter, like a Brita, in your home.

Ease up on the meat:
To produce 1 kilogram of boneless beef, according to a 2004 UNESCO study on the "water footprint of nations," it takes 6.5 kilograms of grain, 36 kilograms of roughage (coarse grains and pasture), and 155 litres of drinking water. In The Food Revolution, John Robbins calculates that a vegetarian diet requires only 300 gallons of water per day, while a meat eating diet requires 4,000 gallons per day. You save more water by not eating a pound of beef than you do by not showering for an entire year. So go for it, eat a few vegetarian meals a week and reduce your carbon footprint!

Regional Water Issues
A Watershed Approach from the Environmental Protection Agency http://www.epa.gov/owow/watershed/approach.html
A watershed approach is the most effective framework to address today's water resource challenges. Watersheds supply drinking water, provide recreation and respite, and sustain life. More than $450 billion in food and fiber, manufactured goods, and tourism depends on clean water and healthy watersheds.

Article from Sciencedaily: Climate Change Threatens Drinking Water, As Rising Sea Penetrates Coastal Aquifers http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071106164744.htm

The Pacific Institute: Global Water Crisis http://www.pacinst.org/topics/water_and_sustainability/global_water_crisis/

The Pacific Institute: Threats to the World’s Freshwater Supplies http://www.pacinst.org/reports/freshwater_threats/threats_to_the_worlds_freshwater.pdf

General Convention
http://www.episcopalarchives.org/cgi-bin/acts/acts_resolution.pl?resolution=2003-D046
http://www.episcopalarchives.org/cgi-bin/acts/acts_resolution.pl?resolution=2003-D070