The rain falls onto Mt Cooroy - which is a pyramid shaped small mountain (500mt)which is an ancient volcanic plug - and I buy my drinking water from Cooroy Spring Water. They tap directly from the spring which arises at the base of the mountain & deliver to my door. Mt Cooroy is a real cloud collector about 15km in from the coastline of Noosa.

Only two people really know how the water gets to the tap in your house.
1 The old bloke about to retire who has worked for the last twenty five years repairing the water mains in your city.
2 The young person who takes notice of the old bloke to create the GIS mapping system for the water mains for your city.

I don't know where the source of our tap water is in my hometown. I assume it is an underground channel of Cut Bank Creek (which is fed by glaciers in the Rocky Mountains),but I could be wrong. In any case, once it gets out of the ground, it goes to the northside water tower on a big hill about a quarter mile from all the houses it serves. (Very small town.) From there it goes into the water main, into the pipe that connects to the house, through various smaller pipes that run to the kitchen, bathrooms, washer, and outside faucets.

What's interesting is that the grey water gets channeled back to a lagoon where it's filtered, tested for solid waste percentage, treated with chemicals, and fed back into the supply. Ew. No wonder so many people use natural springs and private wells in that area.

St. Mary's Lake water station. About 5 miles of pipes and pumps. Out my tap.

Rain falls into lake Michigan
goes to the waterstation via the crib
piped to lake bluff and prepared drinkable then goes to water tower and comes from east to my street,
turns south into my watermain at the north side foundation,acroos the basement ceiling south,
turns east up one floor and voila.
How about that?

Snow falls in colorado,Utah, New mexico, and Nevada, melts, and flows to the Colorado River. From there it enters lake mead, is sucked into the treatment plant and on to my home. If I lived here (Las Vegas) prior to the construction of hoover Dam, I would have recieved water from Big Springs, whose principle Auqifer is fed by the Spring Mountains, The Sheep Mtns, and McCullogh Mtns. Unfortunately these springs no longer flow.

Rain hit ground level. Goes through ground. Get collected through settle plains in delivery system. Water if filtrated and improved. Then delivered to used outlets. Comes out activated tap outlets.

i only drink fiji water. where it comes from is directly on the bottle

We are on a well drilled at the edge of Sand Canyon Wash that drains Bear Divide in the San Gabriel Mountains of S. Cal. If a drop of water falls on the North side of Bear Divide's summit, it is not subject to the Pueblo Water Decision of Los Angeles, so we are free to use it without metering.

Once the drop enters the surface/subsurface flow in the upper elevations of Bear Divide, it comes down to our well where we pump it via a submersible to a 5K storage tank, then via a surge pump to either irrigation or household use. The water table here only goes to 150 ft, after that you hit blue clay and no mas agua

From the Colorado River

Water comes from Hetch Hetchy system via Crystal Springs reservoir and 150 mile aqueduct from Sierra Nevada just north of Yosemite Valley. I know about it because the subject is of interest to me and I've studied history of water systems.

mountain, rocks, factory, truck, store, kitchen

I call our "local" water company, which is owned by some people in Germany (long story), to find out which underground water source our water is taken from. From there, they send it through town to my water main. It comes into my house in the basement, and comes out in one of our 5 taps.

The rainfall (and/or snowfall) that refurbishes my watershed comes from water that evaporated from areas west of where I live (western Montana). That evaporated water reached the ground by rain and/or snowfall and was absorbed into the ground and provides water for the underwater spring slightly northwest of my home. I have a well (approximately 225 ft. deep) which pumps water from the underwater spring to my home on an as-needed basis and flows freely from my tap when needed (unless the power is out!)

In Montana that is usually fairly easy because most municipal water is extracted from local creeks and rivers. In Helena our water comes from Ten Mile Creek and the Missouri River.

I agree, from teh tap back to the raindrop would be easier, but here goes. I live in Raleigh, NC, USA, and work in Durham, NC, USA. Raleigh gets its drinking water primarily from Falls Reservoir, which is located in the upper reaches of the Neuse River basin. Raleigh also has a minor water intake at lake Johnston, which is in the swift Creek basin, but Swift Creek basin is also part of the Neuse River basin, but downstream from Falls Lake.

Durham derives its drinking water primarily from Lake Michie on the Flat River, and the Little River Reservoir on (you guessed it!) Little River. Durham also has an emergency water intake on the Eno River. These three rivers all eventually merge together to form the Neuse River, and are all upstream from Falls Reservoir.

So regardless of whether I am at work or at home, the raindrop that I drink fell somewhere in teh upper Neuse river basin. Now where it goes after I flush it down the drain, that's another story...

My water comes from snow, not rain.
Falls on the western side of the [US] Continental Divde and flows into Dillon Reservoir where we [in Denver] steal it and ship it thru the Roberts Tunnel to the Platte.

I only know this because of a tour I took to the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve, one of three main watersheds that feed Vancouver and the Lower Mainland (one of the three is actually owned by BC Hydro for electricity generation, but the Greater Vancouver Regional District buys water from them when supplies run short, especially in the summer, when rainfall wanes). The water here has a very high turbidity (it's very soft, which means we use less soap, but it feels more difficult to rinse off...) because basically rain water is collected, then chlorinated, then piped down from the mountains north of North Vancouver in massive pipes. Along the way, the water encounters some pumps and some reservoirs, but the path is quite direct. As a result, the water is quite "natural" tasting, meaning it's muddy and contains discolouring amounts of what appears to be copper chloride and copper (II) chloride, leaving blue and green deposits here and there.

Generally, the nearest municipality will have information (probably a website) with information about water and how it gets to you. That's the best I can do.

It falls into the poland springs or nearby reservoirs in poland, fryeburg, or pierce pond township Maine (which you'll never find because the bears and moose conspire against you to keep it secret), is piped to the nearby bottling plant, is shipped to a distribution center near portland, then to the one near Boston that I'm gonna guess is in Newton somewhere like all the other DCs, then on a truck into the city and to my office. We also have the carbonated version that probably follows the same process but I'm not 100% sure. Tap water is tougher, but the only reservoir I know of in the immediate vicinity of my house (where I'd drink tap water) is in either cambridge or arlington, and I'm not sure which because I've only ridden my bike by it. From there it probably goes into a pipe that runs along by fresh pond and down mass ave, and I'm about two or three pipes down from that, depending on which faucet I'm drinking from.

melting snow and rain wash into the rio grande refreshing the aquifer and well

Ok. That's easy. The icecap pressed through the landscape here,( about 15 -20 000 years ago or so...) and created a lot of stone & sand-filled ridges. Basically they function as a filering system.
No recycled seawater, thank god. Just clear fresh water.

Boy. Okay, let's work backwards:

Our town has wells that tap into the aquifer and draws the water from the wells, chlorinates it and sends it through the city water system to our tap...

We sit on an aquifer under the (named after the main city in our county) Plain....

The water in the aquifer is supplied by both local streams and, for example, those sourced in the hills surrounding the plain and also from the local river......

The river is fed by both the local streams coming from the hills nearby and also from its' source (in a county to the north)...

And, of course, rainfall when we get it. (Our aquifer is being depleted at an alarming rate.)

Most of our water here (Sussex, England) comes from natural subterranean reservoirs. The rain water filters through the chalk deposits and requires very little processing. However, in recent years, demand has outstripped supply and more of out water is comming from the Thames Valley (around London).

River: The Willamette River in Eugene, Oregon

headwaters: upper McKenzie and the Willamette, guarded by friends, primarily snowmelt from the Oregon Cascades, west-side

midstream: McKenzie flows into the Willamette; runs through a chemical-farm belt with some run-off. passes through Springfield, Oregon - past the SONY and Weyerhauser plants; effluent is highly regulated now. People are pretty grumpy about pollution and we've a toxics-right-to-know law (constantly fighting corporate de-funding at the state level) so the trend is to clean.

pick-up point: EWEB city water; publicly owned cooperative utility delivers water to city and my tap. Publicly owned power/utility plants are GOOD.

Up til a couple of months ago I had well water drawn from a seep at 1000 feet elevation - miss that...

Seems like a local call is what is required. But what just flashed in my mind was a map that displayed the catchment basins of all municipal drinking water systems in the nation. I would imagine this would be very useful tool to have for emergencies as well.

Well, we do rainwater collection, and I installed the gutters, the collection pipes, the roof washer, the storage tank, the pump, the filters, and hired the plumber who put in the pipe to the house, so I know where to stand to see all of the above.

For the average suburbanite, I'd suggest contact your local city.

We're in a Mediterannian climate, so rainfall outside of Oct. through April is pretty rare. Local rainfall is stored in reservoirs (though those are for agricultural irrigation) or the aquafer. Our biggest source of water, however, is snow melt, via rivers and streams coming out of the Sierra Nevadas. Much of that is dirverted from northern Calif. via canals.

My tap depends on my city's water processing plant.

The answer here is to have already done it for many people. I am interested in things like this so I already knew. (Exact answer comes from reading the information your water utility supplies wityh the bill).

1. Look at your local government waterboard site
2. Ring the local council and ask
3. Look at a map of the area and try to figure it out
4. Ring the local alderman's office
5. Contact your local environment-friendly group and ask

Passaic Valley Water Commission, because I pay the water bill. Oddly, I live in Paterson, and my water comes fro mthe Passaic River via the Great Falls. Been there, nice park.

Of course, water for me can also comes from the Little Falls pumping station. Apparently they have a cross-connect or something.

Find your water bill, browse the web for a site. PVWC has a good site.

Also, the National Weather Service and National Geological Survery have flood maps and warnings as well as drought warnings. These usually list reservoirs and you can find out likely suspects of yours from there as well.

The rain falls and seeps into the ground, slowly trikling into through the lime stone. Accumulating into aquifers, were they run up into natural springs. These springs are tapped by municipal pipes to bring water into a pumping facility, and the into my sink as i open the fuacet.

I live on Bainbridge Island,WA and the city in conjunction with the state department of ecology (washington) held a water seminar last year that went thru a lot of what you are asking re: water and ecology. (and I have water from the city, and they regularly put out brochures in the bills talking about the source of our water (wells).) anyway, they have watershed maps that I've looked at, and they are available at city hall, and they hope to have them posted online soon.
So, I'd recommend people go to their public works department to ask about their water and look what they have published on the web. and in many regions there are watershed councils who have been studying just this. In Washington there is a non-profit called CELP (Center for Environment and Law Policy) that has as its subtitle "clean-flowing water for Washinton".