Water Utility

This Wednesday is “Imagine A Day Without Water,” a national effort to educate the public about the value of water. To mark the occasion, Madison Water Utility crews and 3rd graders from Lincoln Elementary will walk from the school to our Park Street municipal well facility carrying jars and jugs filled with 53 gallons of water, the amount of water an average person in Madison uses in one day. Because water is heavy, we’ll also have some wagons on-hand to help haul many of the containers.

Once we arrive, students will allocate their jugs to different home water uses – a certain amount for showers and faucets, some for laundry and dishes, flushing toilets, etc. We’ll also bring kids inside for a tour of the facility.

Start: 1:15 p.m. Lincoln Elementary
End: 1925 South Park St. (Well 18)

Well 18 is a typical Madison municipal well facility. It is aging (built in 1968) and small, but it’s also incredibly important. It pumps 451 million gallon of water a year and serves Madison’s south side neighborhood in the Park St.-Fish Hatchery Road corridor. It also supplies some drinking water to the Greenbush, Bay Creek, Burr Oaks and Bram’s Addition neighborhoods.

Why walk with water? It highlights what children around the world contend with every day. According to the World Health Organization, more than 2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water. Many children spend hours every day carrying water to their homes from often unsafe sources miles away. Those children don’t have to imagine a day without water, they face life without clean water and basic sanitation every day.

Our Water Walk will demonstrate the value of our most critical resource – a safe, reliable water supply and the infrastructure that brings it to homes and businesses across Madison. It will take a parade of Madison children and their helpers just to carry the amount of water that one single person in our city uses in a day.