moving water

Water is a precious resource. Although our planet is covered in 70% water, only 2.5% of it is fresh water. Of the fresh water, most of it is frozen in ice caps -at least for now- or deep underground and less than 1% of it is truly accessible. Already a substantial number of people do not have access to clean fresh water and suffer the consequences.

Daily water consumption varies greatly around the globe and not surprisingly, North America tops the crowd with an average use of nearly 1,900 cubic meters (or 1,900,000 liters, 513,000 gallons) per person. Europeans use "only" 60% as much water and Asia's use is half that of Europe. Africa is at the bottom using a mere 245 cubic meters (245,000 liters or 63,700 gallons) per person.

Much of North America's water use goes to watering lawns, the largest irrigated crop in the country, flushing toilets, and taking showers. An equally important part goes into agricultural irrigation. The latter is often used to grow thirsty crops in deserts or near desert regions. Although much of the water use is non-consumptive, in the sense that water is returned to the surface, the water is nonetheless no longer very useful due to contamination and pollution.

Water flow is heavily controlled. The US has over 75,000 dams and very few rivers remain that flow unimpeded. While such dams produce power and control floods, they often have a devastating impact on fisheries. Entire local economies have disappeared when dams were built. To say nothing of the continual maintenance problems. Most dams do not produce energy and are a substantial number are nothing but a burden. 

Dams maybe problematic but at least they generate electricity. A lot of water flow takes energy instead of producing it. California uses the equivalent output of several nuclear reactors to pump water into the Los Angeles Basin where residents freely sprinkle it onto their lawns and their cars, oblivious to the fact that they live in a near desert.

The ever growing populations in the SouthWest are putting enormous stresses on the water delivery system. And the insistence of locals on lush gardens only makes matters worse. The populations of Arizona have increased ten fold in the last fifty years. A quarter of the houses in Nevada have been built since 1995. The growth of Las Vegas in the last decades has been staggering. Meanwhile the water in Lake Mead is dropping and will soon be below the city's intake pipes.

But the irony of water does not stop there. Nowhere are things more crazy than in the trade in bottled water. Driven by irrational fears of tap water and a huge cool and hip factor, companies are making millions shipping inferior quality product around the globe. 

Shipping water is the fastest growing and least regulated industry in the world. In the 1970's the annual volume was 300 million gallons. By 1980 it more than doubled to 630 million and by the 1990's the volume was up to two billion gallons per year. But that was just the beginning. By 2000, 8 billion gallons or 24 billion liters of water was bottled -over 90% in non-reusable plastic- shipped -at great expense and producing tons of carbon dioxide, and sold.

The amount of energy spent on packaging and shipping water is staggering. Water is a very heavy substance. Packaging it in little non-reusable plastic containers and shrink-wrapping those onto pallets adds additional contamination. The amount of pollution and greenhouse gases generated by the water trade is second to none. And that isn't even counting the equally enormous amounts of sweetened water, also known as soda or soft drinks, that is shipped daily. 

Given how unnecessary it is, and given that 1/3 of the 103 brands of bottled water studied recently contained high levels of chemical and bacterial contamination, one can only wonder why people do this. To say nothing of the fact that at least one quarter of the bottled water is nothing but someone else's tap water.

Think before you drink. It is good for you, and the environment.