[ptaipale]

Indeed. I live near Helsinki, Finland. Here the average consumption is 155 litres per person per day. That is 40 gallons. So the average Californian consumes almost ten times as much water? That's crazy.

And our consumption is not so modest because we'd be short of water; clean water is the one natural resource we have in abundance here. A drought in the sense of California (or even Britain) is just completely unknown thing here.

By the way, the consumption of water is higher in blocks of flats than it is in detached houses. This is because in detached houses each family or household pays for their own water, but in condominium houses the bill is typically shared among all the flats and the paid out in the maintenance fee.

This applies often even to hot water, so there have been cases where a single old man tells his neighbours that he lets hot water run through the sink just so that he gets even with the family with three small children in the neighbouring flat.