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The average human can not live any longer than three days without water. Many of the world’s fresh water sources are running dry or are being contaminated, particularly in developing nations, leaving many without safe water to drink. Only two and a half percent of the Earth’s water is freshwater, and less than one percent is accessible by humans (not tied up in ice caps). This one percent of the Earth’s water supply is expected to sustain a population of over 7 billion people, each needing 2.6 liters a day to remain fully healthy, plus all of the water required for agriculture and industry. These scenarios will only become more and more prevalent as time moves on and we consume more water. The United Nations has classified our planet as being in the midst of a global “water crisis.” Global water supply and shortages are becoming an incredibly real and serious issue, and planning for the future is key to preventing population decline due to a lack of safe drinking water. Shortages of drinking water lead to wars and serious international conflict for basic human survival needs. One of the most popularly and commonly proposed solutions to this problem is to create seawater desalination plants to remove salt from ocean water to make it safe to drink. These water desalination plants, however, are not a viable option to carry us in to the future due to their potentially harmful impacts and expenses.
Before delving in to what is actually wrong with seawater desalination plants, it is important to establish that there are plenty of alternatives available. One of the best alternatives is to adopt more efficient practices, such as conservation of water, and recycling storm water and grey water (from washing machines and bathrooms...
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...sequences and are far cheaper.
Works Cited
1. Into the Sea: Desalination as Hydro-Social Fix in Spain
Erik Swyngedouw, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 103, No. 2, SPECIAL ISSUE: Geographies of Water (March 2013), pp. 261-270
2. “California Water Boards Fact Sheet.” California Water Boards. waterboards.ca.gov, 23 May 2013. Web. 25 Apr. 2014.
3. Desalination in Chennai: What about the Poor and the Environment?
Gregor Meerganz von Medeazza, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 41, No. 11, Money, Banking and Finance (Mar. 18-24, 2006), pp. 949-952
4. “Desalination: An Ocean of Problems.”Food and Water Watch 1 (2009): 1-20. Print.
5. Postel, S.L., G.C. Daily and P.R. Ehrlich. 1996. Human appropriation of renewable fresh water. Science 271:785
It’s no mystery that having clean water is a fundamental element to living in a prosperous society and one of the few things essential for human survival. Water not only sustains our health, but is required in making everything from electronics to clothes. Clean water may seem as ordinary as putting on your shoes, but it’s a daily party of our life that’s being threatened.
Living in a world that is roughly 70% water, and all living creatures found on this planet depend on this resource whether directly or indirectly, making water quality an important topic and vital to sustain our world of cycles. “Determination of status of water quality of a river or any other water sources is highly indeterminate. It is necessary to have a competent model to predict the status of water quality and to advice for type of water treatment for meeting different demands.” (Bai V, 2009) With most of our water on this planet made of salt water and our constant damage towards the remaining water that can be consumed by humans is diminishing with improper distribution on a global scale. If our greed comes before companionship, and our quality of life is more important than pollution, then our future generations to come will be born into a world of chaos, and a scarce of a basic human necessity.
One reason I think they should stop the desalination is that people are wasting 100 gallons of ocean water for only 50 gallons of fresh drinking water. After doing that they will return the leftover water, but it would have twice as much salt when it’s returned to the ocean. When they put the extra salt into the ocean the sea life would not be as healthy and they could die. This hurts the environment a lot and because they are doing this everyday it will start to
One of the biggest challenges facing the world is availability of fresh water. Only about one third of a percent is of the fresh water available on earth is found in surface and ground water for human consumption. Globally these sources of fresh water have been dwindling away and becoming scarcer every year as water demand grows. This problem is true throughout the world and is especially prevalent in the arid regions of the world such as the Southwest United States. Since I am a student here at the University of Arizona and a resident of the state now, these growing water issues not only affect me but all of the residents of Tucson, Arizona. This makes water sustainably critical to the entire region and me.
Muzzin, Suzanne. "Better Desalination Technology Would Help Solve World's Water Shortage." Yale News. Yale University, 11 Apr. 2011. Web. 02 Feb. 2014.
Water is one very essential resource for human existence. It accounts for about two thirds of the earth surface with a volume of about 1.4 billion cubic centimeter. About 97 percent of the total earth’s water is salt water from the ocean with only a minute percentage existing as freshwater accessible for direct human consumption. Freshwater is found in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and underground sources some of which are shallow enough to be tapped at an affordable cost. The lack of portable drinking water needs not be overemphasized as more than 1.2 billion people in the world lack access to clean drinking water (UNDP, 2006). The situation is projected to get worse as the needs for water increases due to city development and population growth with an estimate of 1.8 billion people to live in absolute water scarcity by 2025. The arid regions are the most affected with cases of droughts which may occur as a result of consistent lack of rainfall. Sudan is one country that is grossly affected by lack of rainfall with problems of available water supply for its population. This report will examine the fresh water supply issues in Sudan. Also, water supply option such as desalination and groundwater will be evaluated using cost, environmental impacts and its feasibility factor for both methods.
San Diego County’s plan for a desalination plant should not be put forth. To start it will harm the sea life in the area, it’ll be terrible for the ocean, and the project takes the people’s money.
According to a report on “environmental regulation” in remote areas, conventional desalination processes cannot be applied, due to insufficient infrastructure and energy supply. We can use Reverse Osmosis
Four water uses are the main source of water consumption: industrial, human, agriculture and energy. Water industrial demand is expected to increase in all sectors of production[1]. Furthermore, we should note that the world’s population is growing by about 80 million people per year and could reach 9.1 billion by 2050, with 2.4 billion people living in Sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the most heterogeneously distributed water resources[2]. Also, water waste in agriculture and
Freshwater in the world makes up only a small portion of water on the planet. While the percentage of water in the world is nearly 70%, only 2.5% is consumable. Even further, only <1% is easily accessible to basic human needs. According to National Geographic, “by 2025, an estimated 1.8 billion people will live in areas plagued by water scarcity, with two-thirds of the world's population living in water-stressed regions as a result of use, growth, and climate change.” With this current trend, water will become more immersed in environmental, economic, political, and social changes. Many of these in later years shall need to be addressed as tension rises:
The problem is that the desalination of water requires a lot of energy. Salt dissolves very easily in water, forming strong chemical bonds, and those bonds are difficult to break. Energy and the technology to desalinate water are both expensive, and this means that desalinating water can be pretty costly.
The problem of water scarcity has increasingly spread throughout the world as of yet, The UN reports that within the next half- century up to 7 billion people in 60 countries which is more than the whole present population will face water scarcity (Sawin “Water Scarcity could Overwhelm the Next Generation”). As well the demand for freshwater has tripled over the past 50 years, and is continuing to rise as a result of population growth and economic development. 70% of this demand derives from agriculture which shows the influence of water on food supply globally as well not just drinking water (Sawin “Water Scarcity could overwhelm the Next Generation”). But increasing water use is not just a matter of the greater number of people needing it to drink and eat; it also comes from pollution and misuse of water supplies, by either dumping or runoff of bacteria or chemicals into water. This also “causes other pollutions as well such as soil and air pollution, accelerating wetland damage and human caused global warming” (Smith and Thomassey 25). According to UN report, recent estimates suggest that climate change will account for about 20 percent of the increase in global water scarcity in coming decades.
Freshwater is quite scarce, but it is even scarcer than one might think: about seventy percent of all freshwater is frozen in the icecaps of Antarctica and Greenland and is unavailable to humans. Most of the remainder is present as soil moisture or lies in deep underground aquifers as groundwater. It is not economically feasible to extract this waster for use as drinking water. This leaves less than one percent of the world’s fresh water that is available to humans. It includes the water found in lakes, reservoirs, groundwater that is shallow enough to be tapped at an affordable cost. These freshwater sources are the only sources that are frequently replenished by rain and snowfall, and therefore are renewable. At the current rates of consumption, however, this supply of fresh water will not last. Pollution and contamination of freshwater sources exacerbate the problem, further reducing the amount of freshwater available for human consumption. Something must be done if humans want to even survive in the near future: the lack of clean drinking water is already the number one cause of disease in the world today. The first step is worldwide awareness of the water crisis: governments and the citizens they govern worldwide need to know about this problem and be actively involved in solving this problem.
No matter how advanced our technology is, we are still not capable of generating water. We must utilize the existing water supply more efficiently in order to be sustainable. Many states in the United States believe that they are sustainable. However, polluted water habitats, drained aquifers and rivers, floods, and the salt intrusion show the exact opposite of what we believe.
Rogers, Peter. 2008. "Facing the Freshwater CRISIS. (Cover story)." Scientific American 299, no. 2: 46-53. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 4, 2010).