Fresh water is very hard to come by on the Islands of Bermuda. There are no lakes, and only a small number of water-collecting “lenses” underground. Rainwater is not salty, as the salt from seawater does not evaporate with the water, so by law every home in Bermuda must collect 80% of the rain that falls on its roof.

Bermudan rooves are made of local limestone and channel rainwater into large underground tanks where the water is treated so that it can be used in homes. On average each Bermudan home can store about 50000 litres of water per bedroom.

Because Bermuda does not have a centralised water distribution system it also does not have a centralised sewage system and therefore has the highest density of private cesspits per square kilometre of anywhere in the world.