Although recent flooding across the Midwest has caused many people to shelve their water shortage concerns, officials are still alert to the possibility of drought, overconsumption and other forces that limit our water supplies. In several regions of the U.S., the worst is not yet over. To alleviate some of the pressure on the situation.

In 1837, his newly designed polished steel plow became the answer to the villager’s problems—dirt didn’t cling to the slick surface. Ten years after introducing the new plow, production reached 1,000 plows per year.

This is a huge amount of water devoted to a use that isn'considered a necessity in all circles. To make matters worse, experts estimate that as much as half of the water used for landscape irrigation is wasted due to evaporation, runoff, over-watering, and poorly designed systems.

The doo-wop musical group The Five Royals recorded a song in the 1950s whose lyrics are oddly appropriate for today: You don't miss your water until your well runs dry. Anyone who's ever looked at a globe can see that water covers about 4/5ths of our planet. Looks like we have plenty of water. But 97 percent of that water is salt water, and a further two percent is inaccessible to us frozen in glaciers, for example.