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Flint water crisis in Michigan essays
Introduction to the water scarcity essay
Introduction to the water scarcity essay
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Water is one is a major element that helps to sustain life. For this reason, it is important to ensure that it is available at all times. In particular, safe drinking water should be available for residents at all times. However, this is not always the case. Researches have shown that there are many regions that do not have access to safe drinking water. This is what this research will be based on. The paper will examine the Flint water crisis that has been ongoing for a while now. The paper will be divided into various segments. The first segment will be involve stating the topic as well as showing how it connects to the course themes. This will help to understand the topic better. The next segment will involve locating a newspaper article …show more content…
This is a continuing water contamination crisis in Flint in Michigan. After changing the water source from Detroit to Flint River, the drinking water in the city developed various issues which eventually led to lead contamination. This created a major health problem in the area. The corrosive water from Flint River led to lead from old pipes to percolate into the water. This caused huger levels of lead contamination. Due to this, an estimated 6,000 to 12,000 people have experienced lead infections and have had various health complications. Moreover, speculations have been rife that the eruption of Legionnaires disease may have been caused by this infection. The disease has led to the death of 10 people while 77 others have been …show more content…
Today, water usage is very high. One of the main reasons has been due to an increase in population. Human population is today on the rise. According to the CIA (2015), the birth rate of the human population stands at 1.86%. In the last 100 years, there has been tremendous growth in human population due to advances in medical technology as well as improvement in agriculture. This has led to an increase in water use over the years. In addition, the increase in industries over this period has also led to an increase in water use. Today, there are numerous industries that have come up, each requiring huge amounts of water to run smoothly. The increase in water usage today is partially responsible for the global water crisis. The huge demand for water means that there is less water available for each person and each industry.
Relationship of mass consumption and water use There is a strong relationship between mass consumption and water use. Mass consumption is the process of consuming goods in large quantity. Mass consumption is especially brought about by increase in population. Due to the demand for this consumption, there is a demand for more production. For production process to take this, lots of water will need to be used. This is aimed at ensuring that the supply is able to meet the current demand. For this reason therefore, it is safe to say that mass consumption is directly related to water use. As people
Humans need water. In a world that is overpopulated, we use a lot of water and other natural resources. Currently, in our world, clean water is getting scarce. Recently, for example, Flint, Michigan, had a water crisis. In early 2016, the water was discovered to be tainted with lead and other toxins. Long before that, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, and Governor Rick Snyder along with his council, knew about the lead, but to save money for the city of Flint in early 2014 Snyder had changed the city’s water source to the Flint River which had corroded pipes, causing people of all ages to be sick from the high amounts of lead
Every person requires water for survival. So what would happen if we ran out? North China is undergoing a serious water crisis, which holds a large part of China’s agriculture and population, with China’s government attempting to gain control of the situation they have decided to bring in water from the south. North China does have many factors contributing to it’s water issue at hand, however, in my opinion there are three main issues which the government should gain control of, or the three biggest causes of China’s crisis. these causes include urbanization, global warming, and the worst for last, industry.
The Flint water crisis would be one of the most critical things today in michigan. It’s critical for young children not to get lead exposure they should be screened from the lead and lead levels in children's bodies as well. (National Center for Healthy Housing) The water needs to be treated with which it will increase the corrosiveness and potentially further erode any lead piping. (Duke) The People in Flint are a facing with not be able to drink water, and shower. All of these things that happened are critical factors of what is happening in the Flint water crisis today. (Reveal)
In the document “How Tap Water Became Toxic in Flint , Michigan” by Sara Ganim the issue was that the residents could not get clean water from their taps . The state decided that they would save money and switch their water . As they switched , residents noticed that the water started to look funny and smell funny . Some thought it was sewage but it was really iron in the water . The Department of Environmental Quality was not treating the Flint River water with an anti-corrosive agent causing the water to have lead in addition to iron . The lead in the water lead to lead poisoning and several medical conditions .Due to all the health conditions the Doctors decided to take matters into their own hands . Patients reported having rashes and
The water crisis in Flint Michigan began as early as was as April of 2014. The crisis is concerning a small town called Flint, located at the bottom right of michigan were the majority of the population is African American. The issue began when the town 's water supply witch in past use to come from the detroit river water supply was switched over to the Flint river water supply. People soon began to complain about the taste, smell, and color of the tap water, and of symptoms such as hair loss and rashes from bathing in the water. Even though there were many signs that the water was indeed contaminated, such as when a General Motors plant in Flint stopped using municipal water in October of 2014, claiming that it corroded car parts, the government officials stated that the water was not a threat to the public 's health and safety. However it was later revealed that the water was in fact unhealthy, and contained too much lead. The issue was brought to the eyes of the public when Lee Anne Walters, a Flint resident. This mother of four had seen her family suffer from various alarming symptoms, including abdominal pains, hair loss, and rashes; she also has a son who showed signs of developmental problems. She decided to switch her family to bottled water, and the symptoms abated. Finally, in February of 2015, she demanded that the city test the tap water. A federal investigation was launched and the results came back shocking. The water was extremely toxic containing 400 parts per billion of lead. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), there is no safe level of lead in drinking water, but the maximum allowed by law is 15 parts per billion. Virginia Tech professor and engineer Marc Edwards, an expert on municipal w...
Through time, the water in the Flint River has been known to be of poor quality, and was severely degraded during the 1970s, due to "the presence of fecal coliform bacteria, low dissolved oxygen, plant nutrients, oils, and toxic substances." In 2001, the state of Michigan ordered the monitoring and cleanup of 134 polluted sites within the Flint River watershed, including industrial complexes, landfills and farms loaded with pesticides and fertilizer. According to a class-action lawsuit, the state Department of Environmental Quality was not treating the Flint River water with an anti-corrosive agent, which is in violation of federal law. The river water was found to be 19 times more corrosive than water from Detroit, which was from Lake Huron,
As a result, the water was contaminated with lead because the city did not properly take care of the pipeline, a lot of people become ill due to drinking the water. It took officials 18 months to acknowledge the crisis after a researcher pointed out that lead contamination as double in children since using the local river drinking water. Back-then president Obama declare the Flint water crisis a federal emergency and funded the city with financial aid, and other states and volunteers donates bottle of water for the people of Flint. Due to the city long reaction effort 10 people have died from drinking the contaminated water. The need to save money has hurt the city of Flint Michigan gravely and the people are still
The water crisis in Flint Michigan was a travesty of justice and could have been avoided. While examining this unfortunate incidence, the truth of what happened is clear, conscience and deplorable that the choice in cost-cutting measures would lead to contaminated water that was harmful to many.
This is because only a small part of the population, particularly in developing countries, have access to water of acceptable quality. It is estimated that in some countries only 20% of the rural population has water of satisfactory quality. Based on these statistics, it is clear the urgent need for awareness about caring for water use. Almost without realizing it, we are seriously jeopardizing this essential resource, not for us but for our children's children and their generations, aware that in other parts o...
We abuse water in the United States because we are never without it but what we don’t realize is that Water is a scarce resource and it’s clear that humanity is facing a critical water crisis. There are more than 2000 million people affected by water shortages in over 40 countries. As population continues to increase, the situation will only get worse. The resources that are available to us are getting highly polluted by human and industrial waste and effecting economically. Many big lakes and rivers are being seriously polluted and half of the wetlands in the world are disappearing. Water Bourne diseases have been a leading source of death because 7 million people don’t have access to clean pure water. We need to conserve as much water as possible because there are thousands of people in the world that are dying of dehydration which is actually a major cause of illness in the world.
The article, “Iran’s water crisis the product of decades of bad planning”, by Jason Rezaian, published on July 2, 2014, is an informative and a rather bone-chilling article about Iran's water crisis. In the article,the author outlines and explains many different points by helping the reader to understand more in depth the problem of the article and connecting the different elements throughout the story.These points are also very important because they are what makes the reader understand the background behind the thesis that,“Iran is headed for a water shortage of epic proportions, and little is being done to reverse a decades-long trend that has reduced the country’s water supply to crisis levels.” In my opinion, this article was everything I needed for my research and I
Water is an important resource which is becoming increasingly scarce and need to be preserved or sustained globally and locally. Availability of ground water is the most serious problem faced by the billion of people today, as so many bore well had made by human for their convenience because of this activity ground water level decreases. It has been estimated that 1.2 billion people have no water within 400m of their dwelling (Gould, 1995) Government and organisations
Freshwater in the world makes up only a small portion of the 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.
70% of this demand derives from agriculture which shows the influence of water on food supply globally as well as 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 a UN report, recent estimates suggest that climate change will account for about 20 percent of the increase in global water scarcity in coming decades. One of the main causes of water scarcity is water mismanagement worldwide.
Water is an integral part of not only human beings but all other creatures in the world. We use it every day for different purposes such as domestic, agricultural and industrial. Water has always been a prestigious resource. However, the majority of people do not appraise water’s worth since they do not face water scarcity; whereas, in third world countries it is one of the most serious problems. Nearly 2.4 billion people have a lack of water resources in the world, shows the investigation done by the Pacific Institute, an Oakland, California-based non-profit scientific research group. Moreover, every year this number is growing gradually and more people are suffering (Bloomberg News, 2010). There are certain causes which deteriorate current situation. The most influential reasons are global warming, pollution by human-beings and overpopulation. It is known that India is one of the countries which face water scarcity so this essay will consider the possible ways of solutions of water shortage in India.