Water 101

Water! We Can’t Live Without It! 

We all need to do our part to help protect and conserve it.  Learn more about water, where it comes from and why it is important in our lives. Water comes in different forms and rainwater can carry pollutants into streams, rivers and ponds.

Water is all over the earth. It is in rivers, lakes and oceans. When the sun heats the water, the water turns into clouds. The clouds you see in the sky are made up of millions of water droplets. When the water droplets become big and heavy, they fall from the clouds to the earth. If it is warm outside, the water falls as rain. If it is cold outside, the water falls as snow. When the rain or snow falls on the earth, it waters the trees and plants and fills the rivers, lakes and oceans. 

The water cycle refers to the constant recycling of the fresh water on our planet. There is always the same amount of water on the earth - no more and no less. Even though 70% of the earth’s surface is water, only 3% is fresh water. Of that 3% of fresh water, 2% is frozen in icebergs! That leaves 1% of fresh water available for people, plants and animals use. Think about it - the water you use today is the same water that was here millions of years ago. The water you drink today may be the same water that dinosaurs played in! Because there is only a finite quantity of water on our planet, it is very important to keep water clean. 

The water we have now is all of the water we will ever have. In nature, water is continuously “recycled” through evaporation, condensation and precipitation.