He said monthly volume had declined from an average of 100,000 gallons to 45,000.

New Yorkers use an average of 1.2 billion gallons of water each day, officials said.

Water consumption has fallen in the past few years; as recently as 1991, the city went through an average of 1.45 billion gallons a day.

Its five-year average of 188.2 million gallons a day, through 2000, is just below the state limit.

That is a drop in the bucket compared with other states; California, for example, produces an average of 400 million gallons of wine a year.

Try 1 million gallons, the same amount a person using an average of 100 gallons a day would take more than 27 years to consume.

The stations each pump an average of 40,000 gallons of gasoline or more a month.

That's an average of 180 million gallons a day, or about 13.5 percent of total water consumption.

The water supply system provides an average of 11 million gallons per day to Fall River and several surrounding communities.

The system is designed to provide a daily average of 173 million gallons safely.