Nina Shen Rastogi answers the question; if water is continuously recycled, then how can we waste it?
http://www.slate.com/id/2268920/
Published Oct. 5, 2010 on the Slate magazine, this article addresses the multiple factors that go into water comming out of your indoor plumbing.
CLAIM: Water shortages are really a problem of distribution. We may have enough freshwater on Earth to meet the global population's current needs, but we can't always make it available where it's needed, when it's needed, and in the quality in which it's needed.
3 support points:
1) You can think of a community's water supply as a bank balance: If the community takes out more than can be returned in a timely fashion, it may reach a point at which it doesn't have enough water to grow crops, wash clothes, or flush toilets.
2) Not all water use is equal; depending on the source from which a community take its water, certain water involved actions and activities consume water completely and others return water back to the watershed.
- Some communities take their water from local rivers and stream and then treat and return the used water to the same rivers and streams.
- For these communities, water from activities like showering and such is recycled and returned to the local watershed.
- Also water from activities like watering the lawn and washing the car is lost although eventually returned in precipitation.
- Some other communities take their water from the ground; the water from ground aquifers takes years to replenish.
- For these communities, all water is consumed/lost.
3)For every gallon of tap water you use, your utility company has to extract it, clean it, pump it to your house, pump it back out, reclean it, and eventually discharge it.
- supplying a Northern Californian with potable tap water and then treating that water after it spirals down the drain requires about 0.4 kilowatt-hours of electricity per day.
CONCESSION: Thanks to the
hydrologic cycle, we drink and bathe in the same H
2O that rained on the dinosaurs. And, theoretically, at least, the Earth has more than enough for all of us: According to Brian Richter, co-director of the Nature Conservancy's Global Freshwater Program, human activities—agriculture, manufacturing, bathing, drinking, and so on—consume only about 10 percent of the planet's available freshwater supply.
I fully agree with Ms. Nina Shen Rastogi; I believe water should be conserved because it is connected with other energy consumption. I checked Indianapolis Water to see where my water is comming from. Indianapolis uses a combination of water from rivers, creeks, streams, and reseviors along with wells and groundwater. This made me wonder whether there was a way to aid our local water treatment plants in being aware of what we are adding to our water supply. Chemicals in cleaners and other things that go down our drains may be introduced to our local rivers and streams.
