Regular readers of my column know that I work hard to promote water conservation across the country.

Being a master plumber for most of my life has made me extra-sensitive about the topic of water conservation, and I'm thankful for the opportunity to share some of my information with you.

We plumbers make our living supplying customers with fresh, clean drinking water and safely returning wastewater back to the environment. Sometimes it seems that this service is largely taken for granted.

Long ago, when I was young and just starting out in my family's plumbing business, a local supply house had an old poster of a plumber in a suit and tie working on a drain line and the caption read: "The plumber: Protector of America's health."

Most of us will chuckle at the image of a plumber working in a suit and tie and being compared with a doctor.

But for me, looking at that old poster was a sad reminder of how, over the years, society started looking at plumbing as a dirty job instead of a very skilled profession.

After looking at that poster every day, my mission became clear. I wanted to help put respect back into the plumbing trade by educating the general public on how plumbing systems work, and the importance of working with licensed professional plumbers.

The exciting thing about getting a message out is that no matter what, if you keep on moving forward toward your goal, opportunities will present themselves.

In the years since, I've been blessed to have had wonderful media opportunities that included my own national TV shows, book deals and, of course, this newspaper column. All these media ventures have promoted the plumbing trades, and I believe we're all a little more aware of the importance of properly installed plumbing systems.

But now it's time to go to the next level and raise awareness of the essence of what makes a plumbing system possible in the first place. And that's having an adequate supply of fresh, drinkable water that we can use in our plumbing systems. This brings us back to water conservation.

My new mission is to spread the word that conserving water is a very serious issue no matter where you live in this country. Clean, usable water is a finite resource and we all have to start using the water we have left wisely, or else many more areas in America may face water shortages in the coming years.

One staggering figure we need to work on is that about 50 percent of the toilets in the United States are the old, 3.5-gallons-per-flush water wasters. New toilets use 1.6 GPF or less. With every flush these old toilets waste close to 2 gallons of water. If you add that all up, across the country we waste 1.6 billion gallons of drinking water with our old toilets, every day!

The good news is that conserving water for most of us can be as easy as one, two, three. All it takes is three simple plumbing upgrades:

1. Change your faucet aerators.

2. Change your showerheads.

3. Change your old toilets.

To see my free instructional videos on making these changes and for more information about saving water, please visit savewateramerica.com. You can also take a quick quiz to gauge your potential water savings. You'll be helping Habitat for Humanity as well. The major company sponsoring the Web site will make a donation to Habitat for Humanity with every quiz taken.

So start now and don't feel guilty about the past, because it's never too late to get on board with this important issue. Anything you may have wasted before is just water under the bridge!

Visit www.eddelgrande.com; e-mail eddelgrande@hgtvpro.com.