http://todayshealthsite.com/what-our-water-today-might-some-day-become.htmlWhat Our Water Today, Might Some Day Become! Todayshealthsite.com

Todays Health Article

August 19th, 2011

Today, people  just may have completed or kicked this line around with several answers. Perhaps it may never even touched you in way that seemed to matter.  Why should this subject, be even given such consideration. Perhaps ridiculous, when the world as we  see it, is a planet full of water, lakes and streams. Simply put, we need water every day to stay healthy… and today when you think about it, all the vegetation on this earth, and all life existence, is in need of water, as well. It very well may be, to the average person, who seems surrounded by accessibility to water, it’s too much to even to compensate how much water is being used on this earth  each and every day. What  our water today, might one day become, simply not enough, very costly, controlled or rationed, and or contaminated. Where do we go from here.

Where is Earth’s Water Located?

You may have concluded that… water is continually moving around, through, and above the Earth as either water vapor, liquid water, and ice. The Earth may be compared closely to the likes of a terrarium, whereby it neither, as a whole, gains nor loses much matter, including water.

If you think about it, not too get far off the subject, little  matter, other than meteors from outer space, are captured by Earth, and very little of Earth’s substances escape into outer space.  This is an important concept to understand which certainly holds true about water. This means that the same water that existed on Earth millions of years ago is still here. Think there is no idea how old or where the water you just drank came from.

Water on and in the Earth

Salt Lake City, Utah to Topeka, Kansas, USA.
Credit: Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; USGS.
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FACTS

By viewing these bar chart, about 97 percent of all water is in the oceans and about three percent of all Earth’s water  is freshwater. The majority of that, about 69 percent, is locked up in glaciers and icecaps, mainly in Greenland and Antarctica.

You might be surprised that of the remaining freshwater, almost all of it, is below your feet, as ground water. No matter where on Earth you are standing, chances are that, at some depth, the ground below you is saturated with water.

Of all the freshwater on Earth, only about 0.3 percent is contained in rivers and lakes—yet rivers and lakes are not only the water we are most familiar with, it is also where most of the water we use in our everyday lives exists.

Simply Not Enough!

Wong Poh Poh, a professor at the National University of Singapore, told a regional conference that global warming was disrupting water flow patterns and increasing the severity of floods, droughts and storms — all of which reduce the availability of drinking water.

Wong said the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that as many as 2 billion people won’t have sufficient access to clean water by 2050. That figure is expected to rise to 3.2 billion by 2080 — nearly tripling the number who now do without it.

At the beginning of the decade, the World Health Organization estimated that 1.1 billion people did not have sufficient access to clean water.

The New York Times article, “Southeast Drought Study Ties Water Shortage to Population, Not Global Warming”, summarizes the findings of Columbia University researcher on the subject of the droughts in the southwest between 2005 and 2007. The findings were published in the Journal of Climate. They say the water shortages resulted from population size more than rainfall.

Lawrence Smith, the president of the population institute, asserts that although an overwhelming majority of the planet is composed of water, 97% of this water is constituted of saltwater; the fresh water used to sustain humans is only 3% of the total amount of water on Earth (Hoevel). Therefore, Smith believes that the competition for water in an overpopulated world would pose a major threat to human stability, indeed, world wars may be fought over the control of thinning ice sheets and nearly desiccated reservoirs.^[6] 2 billion people have gained access to a safe water source since 1990.

According to the California Department of Water Resources, if more supplies aren’t found by 2020, the region will face a shortfall nearly as great as the amount consumed today. Los Angeles is a coastal desert able to support at most 1 million people on its own water; the Los Angeles basin now is the core of a megacity that spans 220 miles (350 km) from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border. The region’s population is expected to reach 41 million by 2020, up from 28 million in 2009. The population of California continues to grow by more than two million a year and is expected to reach 75 million in 2030, up from 49 million in 2009. But water shortage is likely to surface well before then

Water Very Costly

It was not that long ago when most of thought that selling bottled water was a joke someone came up with, who in their right mine would buy a bottle of water, yet today its is one of the bigger share of the beverage industry. Who would ever thought that what was for many FREE for the taking is now dollars for a gallon. I remember our water came from a spring that ran out of the side of the mountain into a a concrete reservoir which then was gravity fed to our house… no electricity required. Yes, all you had to do was turn on the faucet and the water freely flowed out. Those were the days.

Now if you live in a city or even now miles from one, their control or regulation to pay the price that they demand seems to be a way of life… even in the Great North West! We have have seen the price of a gallon of water to continually escalate whether we have had large snow fall or little, makes no difference here. I have not heard of a water bill going down.

“Water bills future” was Googled and many of the major cities all over the world indicated that the need for increase costs for their water prices. Therefore, as the demand for water is being indicated, so does the price escalate. Needless to say, where will the price stop, will water be afforded, only by the wealthy.

On 23 April 2010, the World Bank held a high-level private meeting about water in New York, at which higher  prices were discussed. Days before that the OECD, which represents the  world’s major economies, issued three water reports calling for prices to rise. “Putting a price  on water will make us aware of the scarcity and make us take better  care of it,” said Angel Gurría, the OECD secretary-general. It has also been a key theme of meeting of industry leaders in Paris, hosted by Global Water Intelligence.

The discussion at the World Bank was  raised by Lars Thunell, chief executive officer of the International Finance Corporation.  “Everyone said water must be somehow valued: whether you call it cost,  or price, or cost recover,” said Usha Rao-Monari, senior manager of the  IFC’s infrastructure department. “It’s not an infinite resource, and  anything that’s not an infinite resource must be valued.”

Controlled or Rationed by !

Whether we like it not, this country, government, state, and city, have many of these regulations all ready in place to ration water if need be or they do so by the cost of water. Many of our elderly or fixed income families use very little water compared to the average household. There is also brown yards, no grass watered, nor do they take long showers.  Water for these people is already a commodity that has out priced their household income.

Reminds me of our farming days, where sometimes the only green grass was in our yards because the horses  and cows had eaten the grass to barren ground, so we let them in the yard to mow the grass and clean up the neglected weeds.

It’s no secret that water is being rationed, as we speak,in many parts of the world… either because of droughts or heat waves, or just unhealthy water, or natural disasters. Rationing is a form or control that allows all to share… sort of. I remember a few years ago our city chose to do so, as well. We could only water on even days, night only, because our address was an even number. There was city crews patrolling, “the water patrol” giving tickets to those who chose not to adhere to the rules.

Just think how this might become should our neighborhood become one of those areas that has not seen rain for a very long time, and haveexcessive heat! Poor Texas!

Contamination on the Rise

The Facts of contamination are certianly on the rise

• Every day, 2 million tons of sewage and industrial and agricultural waste are discharged into the world’s water (UN WWAP 2003), the equivalent of the weight of the entire human population of 6.8 billion people.
• The UN estimates that the amount of wastewater produced annually is about 1,500 km3, six times more water than exists in all the rivers of the world. (UN WWAP 2003)
• An estimated 500,000 abandoned mines in the U.S. will cost $20 billion in management and remediation of pollution; many of these sites will require management in perpetuity. (Septoff 2006 and http://www.abandonedmines.gov/ep.htm
• In the U.S. state of Colorado alone, some 23,000 abandoned mines have polluted 2,300 km of streams. (Banks, et al. 1997)
• Chlorinated solvents were found in 30 percent of groundwater supplies in 15 Japanese cities, sometimes traveling as much as 10 km from the source of pollution. (UNEP 1996)
• Roughly one unit of mercury is emitted into the environment for every unit of gold produced by small-scale miners, a total of as much as 1000 tons of mercury emitted each year. (UNEP/GRID-Arendal)
• In a recent comparison of domestic, industrial, and agricultural sources of pollution from the coastal zone of Mediterranean countries, agriculture was the leading source of phosphorus compounds and sediment. (UNEP 1996) Nutrient enrichment, most often associated with nitrogen and phosphorus from agricultural runoff, can deplete oxygen levels and eliminate species with higher oxygen requirements, affecting the structure and diversity of ecosystems.
• Nitrate* is the most common chemical contaminant in the world’s groundwater aquifers. (Spalding and Exner, 1993) And mean nitrate levels have risen by an estimated 36% in global waterways since 1990 with the most dramatic increases seen in the Eastern Mediterranean and Africa, where nitrate contamination has more than doubled. (GEMS 2004)
• According to various surveys in India and Africa, 20-50% of wells contain nitrate1 levels greater than 50 mg/1 and in some cases as high as several hundred milligrams per liter. (cited in FAO 1996)

Todays Health Comments

Today water is no dougbt a main health issue… It is our very existance to survival. What Our Water Today, Might Some Day Become is dependent on actions today and not wasting and not contaminating for tommorrow. With our every day growing population… to exceed a 40% growth by by the year 2020… will our water supply be an enough? Will water become the most costly commodity on this earth… or will find the solution to utilize what we have? There may come a time when natural disasters, like the tsunami in Japan, where water may  become rationed to only those type of disasters. With the need to provide more and more food supply to feed the worlds population, what will be the next chemicals used to fertilize those crops, to control the ever increasing contaminates found in our water? Many questions will need to be resolved and there is not much time  for some action to be taken. Our industrial waste and sewage is becoming a costly  action necessary to continue to provide clean water.