Water

It’s easy to forget that millions of people around the world don’t have enough clean water. Here in the United States we enjoy one of the cleanest drinking water supplies in the world. The EPA regulates the quality of the nation’s drinking water by issuing and enforcing safe drinking water standards and protects the nation’s drinking water sources by safeguarding watersheds and regulating the release of pollutants into the environment.

Although we may have some of the cleanest water around, the U.S. could face serious water shortages in the future. The EPA projects that at least 36 states will face shortages within the next 3-5 years. These shortages will be due to a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste, and excessive use.

California faces a water crisis not only from increased demand, but also from rising temperatures. Higher temperatures mean more water is lost to evaporation and rising seas pushes saltwater into underground freshwater sources. In the Southwestern United States, the Colorado River (whose flow consists mostly of snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains) has seen extreme reductions in flow. This river provides water to 30 millions people over 7 states (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California). Florida doesn’t have nearly enough water for its expected population boom. The Great Lakes are shrinking. Upstate New York’s reservoirs have dropped to record lows, and the Southeastern states such as Georgia see increasingly epic droughts.

As we look beyond our borders to the global water shortage the problem begins to seem unmanageable. The United Nations estimates that 1.1 billion people do not have access to an adequate supply of drinking water and some 2.6 billion do not have access to basic sanitation. Poor water quality is a key cause of poor livelihood and health. Globally, diarrhoeral diseases and malaria killed about 3.1 million people in 2002. Ninety percent of these deaths were children under the age of five. An estimated 1.6 million lives could be saved annually by providing access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene.

So as you can see it’s a big problem, but there’s hope. Both the United Nations and the World Health Organization have aggressive programs to teach about water sanitation and treatment options in developing countries. The UN had set a goal to cut the amount of people without access to clean water in half by 2015, and they are on their way to achieving this goal.

Closer to home, the U.S. is pushing conservation, recycling, and technology (such as desalination). Conservation is the cheapest and easiest option, and many states, such as California, are strongly encouraging it to their residents. Wastewater reuse is an exciting and ever increasing option. Reusing wastewater for agricultural and industrial uses can greatly reduce a states demand on fresh water sources. The Tampa Bay Seawater Desalination Plant in Florida is producing about 25 million gallons a day of fresh drinking water, about 10 percent of that area’s demand. The $158 million facility is North America’s largest plant of its kind. Miami-Dade County is working with the city of Hialeah to build a reverse osmosis plant to remove salt from water in deep brackish wells.

Citations: United Nation’s Water for Life, www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/ ; ‘Crisis Feared as U.S. Water Supplies Dry Up.’ MSNBC. www.msnbc.com/id/21494919// ; Gertner, Jon. “The Future is Drying Up.” The New York Times. October 21, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/magazine/21water-t.html?_r=1&ei=5087&em=&en=adc25155e153a757&ex=1193284800&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1193929245-BI2ZpA99+bwQPH6+2RjuvQ ; “Water for Life, Making it Happen.” 2005. http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/waterforlife.pdf