> Imbalance the system, and you have indeed "consumed" your local water supply.
replyRight, but this is not what is reported by "water consumption". It would be much better to have some kind of index (probably multiple) that estimates how close a particular feature of the water system is to a problem. Is the temperature too high, is there too high a concentration of some contaminant, etc etc.
> this is not what is reported by "water consumption"
replyYou are make a semantic distinction here, but "consumptive use" is a term of art in modelling water usage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumptive_water_use