3 gallons a second is not enough to power a small stream or creek. It’s roughly ‘rivulet’ or ‘wet spot’ territory, and only roughly 10x garden hose flow rates at typical household water pressures.
I’m honestly shocked they could run a commercial bottling operation off that. That’s only 180 gpm, or .4 cubic ft/s.
A typical 5000 gallon commercial water carrier truck is going to take about 30 minutes to fill off that, and that isn’t much water by natural standards.
For instance a 100 ft diameter pond, 3 ft deep (quite small) holds 176,256 gallons, and due to soil absorption and evaporation might never fill up from that source. Even if plastic lined and in a non-desert environment (this one isn’t) that’s over 40 hrs at full flow rate to fill it.
On other hand calculating it in roughly 0.5 l bottles make numbers seem tad more sensible. 1 gallon is what 8 0.5 l bottles. So 1440 bottles a minute or 24 per second. And total would be 800 million bottles a year. Which actually seems not unreasonable number to run factory on. Gallon is not 4 litres, but less, still it is not that slow rate if you think of how much waters go to each bottle.
Well I'm drinking out of one now, and coke cans are way smaller than this, so tiny isn't the adjective I'd pick.
Doubt you're walking around with a gallon jug in your backpack either.
Most beverages are sold in 0.5L to 1L bottles (a wine bottle is 0.75L), so "those tiny bottles" make the most sense when we're talking about a bottled water company.
I’m honestly shocked they could run a commercial bottling operation off that. That’s only 180 gpm, or .4 cubic ft/s.
A typical 5000 gallon commercial water carrier truck is going to take about 30 minutes to fill off that, and that isn’t much water by natural standards.
For instance a 100 ft diameter pond, 3 ft deep (quite small) holds 176,256 gallons, and due to soil absorption and evaporation might never fill up from that source. Even if plastic lined and in a non-desert environment (this one isn’t) that’s over 40 hrs at full flow rate to fill it.