Putting off simple pluming repairs can have disastrous consequences.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—Have you been tapping your foot to the beat of the drip, drip, drip coming from your bathroom sink? Don’t put off the repair any longer. Just one leaky faucet, dripping once every second, can waste more than 3,000 gallons of water a year. That’s not just wasting a precious resource; it’s inflating your water bill. So this week the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is calling on homeowners to grab a wrench during its “Fix a Leak Week.”

THE DETAILS: The call to action is an initiative of the EPA’s WaterSense program, which aims to help families save water and money. The EPA currently endorses more efficient toilets, faucets, and other water-saving devices with its WaterSense seal.

WHAT IT MEANS: The average household spends as much as $500 per year on its water and sewer bill. You could save about $170 of that through simple fixes, and by using water more efficiently. Saving water isn’t just about money, though; it’s also about energy. If you get your water from a public system, you use as much energy running your faucet for 5 minutes as you would leaving a 60-watt light bulb turned on for 14 hours. If one out of every 100 American homes was retrofitted with water-efficient fixtures, we could save about 100 million kilowatts-hours (kWh) of electricity per year—and eliminate 80,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s roughly the same as taking 15,000 cars off the road for a year.

Here’s how to get a handle on leaks and save water in your home: