Maybe this is some Freakonimics-type thinking here, but there’s a thought bouncing around the internet that goes something like this, “coal-fired power plants use a lot more water than natural gas-fired power plants, and since we’re moving towards more of the latter because we have so much more natural gas than we used to, and since fracking is why we have so much more natural gas than we used to, then fracking is reducing the amount of water that we are using.”

This article over at wateronline.com says we used 33 trillion gallons of water in 2012, down from 52 trillion gallons in 2005.  If somebody knows more about this subject than we do, and can add something to this article, we’d love to hear it.