Skip to main content
Refill EarthPlay

Water systems are connected—even when the pipes are hidden.

See how source water, drinking water, wastewater, stormwater, reuse, utilities, and communities fit together.

An aerial view shows a wastewater-treatment plant among fields near Chickasha, Oklahoma.

Protect, treat, distribute, monitor

A drinking-water system begins before the treatment plant—with source protection—and continues through treatment, storage, distribution, testing, maintenance, and household plumbing.

A hydrologic technician wearing gloves bends over a shallow creek to collect a water-quality sample.

Collect, treat, recover, return

Wastewater systems protect health and receiving waters. Treatment can recover water, nutrients, energy, or heat when the process and local context support it.

Rain becomes infrastructure work

Impervious surfaces accelerate runoff. Pipes, ponds, wetlands, trees, rain gardens, permeable surfaces, and floodplains manage different parts of the problem.

Volunteers plant a rain garden beside a road and parking area.

People keep the system trustworthy

Operators, engineers, lab teams, planners, public-health staff, watershed groups, and residents make water reliability possible. Affordability and equitable service are system requirements, not side notes.

Continue learning

Choose the next learning route or bring what you learned back to the question game.