running water

running water (uncountable)

1. Water available from taps.
   • 1951, Kenneth Allen MacKichan, Estimated Use of Water in the United States, 1950, page 4:

     The rural population of the United States in 1950 was 57.5 million; ( of this total 22 percent was served by running water) and used an estimated 3,500 million gallons of water per day.

   • 2000, Salt Lake City Metropolitan Area, 1998 - Volumes 170-199, page A-19:

     A public system or private company refers to any source supplying running water to six or more housing units.

   • 2004, Tony Perez, Nine Lives and Still Running, →ISBN, page 1:

     The things I previously seen as life's necessities—proper running water to drink and wash with, sanitary restrooms, and local medical help—were nowhere to be found in this God-forsaken little town.

   • 2004, Mona D. Sizer, Texas Disasters: Wind, Flood, and Fire, Taylor Trade Publications (→ISBN), page 183:

     In sight of the river, their factories' source for water, they often live without running water and electricity [...because] the river becomes polluted with industrial wastewater as well as untreated, raw sewage.

   • 2010, Jonathan Soffer, Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City, →ISBN:

     At the time being middle class in America meant education for the children and modern home conveniences, most basically, hot and cold running water.

   • 2012, Kate Lazarus, ‎Bernadette P. Resurreccion, ‎Nga Dao, Water Rights and Social Justice in the Mekong Region, →ISBN, page 48:

     First, since resettled people had to move into existing communities in designated resettlement areas, policy adjustment to assist host communities with running water and electricity were needed.

2. Used other than with a figurative or idiomatic meaning: see running,‎ water.
   • 2004, J. Jacoby, ‎E. Welch, Pollutant Effects in Freshwater:

     Productivity in running water is dependent primarily on attached algae, which is part of the periphyton.

   • 2006, Henry Philip Farnham, The Law of Waters and Water Rights, →ISBN:

     The action of running water is such as to wear away the banks against which the current is directed, and therefore one riparian owner has no right to change the flow of the current so as to direct it against the land of the opposite owner.

• tap water

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