How a City Gets Its Water: The Hidden Journey from Mountain Rain to Kitchen Tap

Turn on a tap and clean water appears, on demand, at any hour, for pennies. It is one of the greatest engineering achievements in history, and almost no one thinks about it. Where does that water actually come from, and how does it travel from distant mountains and rivers to your kitchen?Edward Callenford traces the hidden journey of a city's water: the reservoirs and aqueducts that gather it, the pumps and pressure that move it uphill, the vast buried network of mains that keeps it flowing, and the constant balancing act that delivers exactly enough, everywhere, all the time. Along the way he explains why old cities and new megacities face the same stubborn problems, and what happens when the system fails.Clear, story-driven, and richly illustrated with original diagrams, this book reveals the astonishing infrastructure beneath our feet, and will leave you seeing an ordinary glass of water as the marvel it truly is.