• RamRabbit@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    To me it looks like you’re all washing floors and filling toilets and watering golf courses with precious drinking water.

    As the other person said, yes on the former two, not really on the latter (though there are exceptions).

    For an individual, everything is just the one, potable, water supply. Showers, clothes washing, drinking water, lawn watering (though most people don’t water their lawns, it’s expensive and grass grows just fine by itself). It is more complicated and expensive to deal with a secondary water system for homes to have a non-potable water system, so nobody does. One’s water bill is generally the cheapest utility bill.

    Fire hydrants hook up to the potable system as well. As that is the only pressurized water that’s really available. Though, some places have taps into lakes and such for when the water system runs dry during large-scale fire-fighting. Think massive forest fires.

    Farms, golf courses, data centers, nuclear plants, and other industrial uses generally have a secondary water source that isn’t potable. These are generally lightly treated well, river, or lake water. This is mostly for cost reasons as full water treatment gets pricey when you are using that much water.