Where has all the water gone ?

One day while talking with my son Steven over lunch, the subject eventually got around to the water level of Lake Ontario in Toronto and Steve recalled that in school they were told that the shore line was at Dupont st. many year ago, about a 1 1/2 mile above it’s current level. This stuck in my mind and when I read about an orchard in Texas being turned into goat pasture due to low ground water levels, I questioned were all the fresh water in North America has gone over the years. Viewing this as a big change and questioning what other big change had taken place over time, the answer was increased population.

The following figures may not be accurate but will show the intent.

Consider the current population of the US at 287,000,000 and Canada at 30,000,000 for a total of 317,000,000 people in North America not counting Mexico. Next consider that the average person weighs 150 lbs and that 91% of each person is water we have 136.5 lbs of water per person. At 8.333 lbs per gallon (US) this 136.5 lbs of water translates into 16.38 gallons per person. So in essence we have 5,192,480,770 gallons of fresh water walking around these 2 countries in human form. Another way of looking at it is how many cubic feet does that equal. One cubic foot of water weighs 7.5 lbs. giving us 5,769400,000 cubic feet of water.