TORRINGTON – At the city of Torrington Water Department, we know how valuable having a reliable water supply is for your Super Bowl party.
Like during halftime, or as many wastewater operators affectionately call it “the Super Bowl flush,” when thousands of people flush the toilet within the City of Torrington increasing water use by hundreds of thousand gallons over a 30-minute span. If you’re throwing a party for Super Bowl LII, your water use is much greater than what is provided for cooking, drinking and flushing during the game.
Everything we use, wear, buy, sell and eat takes water to make and that is called a water footprint. The water footprint is a measurement of both direct and indirect water use of a process, product, company or sector including water consumption and pollution throughout the full production cycle from the supply chain to the end-user.
Let’s take a look at some of the other party staples that will add to your Super Bowl party water footprint this year:
■ 1 lb. chicken wings- 500 gallons
■ 1 lb. beef- 1800 gallons

■ 1 lb. pork- 576 gallons
■ 1/3 lb. burger- 660 gallons
■ 1 pizza- 300 gallons
■ 16 oz. bottle of water- over ½ gallon where half that amount is only to produce the bottle
■ 16 oz. soft drink- 46 gallons
■ 16 oz. beer- 40 gallons
■ 8 oz. of wine- 63 gallons
■ 1 cotton football jersey- 600 gallons

Every day on average, American’s use 100 gallons of direct water and 1980 gallons of Indirect water for a total average water footprint of 2080 gallons per day.  Since one gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds, that’s the weight of 5 midsized cars or 3.6 SUV’s or pickups you need to haul if you get all that water from a well! That’s pretty sobering, considering that 30 percent of the world’s population lives in areas facing water shortages. http://waterfootprint.org contributed to this article.