Water: Where will it come from in 2050?

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by freeztar

Aye, true enough.
Biomagnification of the toxins is much worse than a diluted-polluted water source. (ie, eating fish from Lake Eerie is much worse than drinking the surface water, by an EXTREME magnitude)

I have just read that many of the chemicals are estrogenic, mimic this hormone, cause many problems in males and promote estrogenic-sensitive cancers in women

World Water Day: 1 BILLION PEOPLE Lack Access to Clean Drinking Water
Sustainable Waters Program - World Water Day 2007: Water Scarcity - 1 billion people lack access to clean drinking water

Every eight seconds, a young child dies from lack of water or a waterborne disease. That's the same as a 747 jetliner full of kids going down every hour. The majority of water-related diseases are linked to what humans are doing to our land and water.

A home desalinator
AVIVA PURE

The unit is quite small. For example, a 10,000 litre per day unit is about 1.3m long, 0.4m wide and 0.8m high, draws only 2200 Watts (2.2kWh)and runs on single or three-phase power. It fits easily into a shed corner and is cheap to run. Most of our desalinators typically use only about 1.5Kw for 1,000 litres of fresh water. The cost of running one of our desalinators can be as low as $0.22 per 1,000 litres of clean, fresh water.



We install your AVIVA PURE Fresh Water desalinator in the corner of a garden shed or garage. We set it up to run on automatic mode, so it shuts off when your rainwater tanks are full, and you simply leave it on to produce fresh water every day of the year. The AVIVA PURE monthly service means we visit you every month to service and maintain your AVIVA PURE Desalinator. This means that you can relax knowing that your AVIVA PURE Desalinator will continue to run day and night, delivering the purest water you have ever tasted.

We have built a number of safety features into your AVIVA PURE Fresh Water Unit, which reduces the possibility of damage from low or high pressure water events. By coupling your bore pump to a pressure or float switch and an outlet ball valve or float switch at the storage tank, you save money because your bore pump isn’t running full-time. We can also run an overflow pipe from your fresh water tank to another tank or dam.

[Michaelangelica]

Happy World Water Day

World Water Day - 22nd March 2007

Water for Life

Cactus goo purifies water

Aimee Cunningham

From Washington, D.C., at a meeting of the American Chemical Society

Many Mexican communities have drinking water laced with unsafe levels of arsenic and unappealing amounts of sand and other solids. To make the water cleaner, Norma Alcantar, a chemical engineer at the University of South Florida in Tampa and her colleagues are working on an environmentally benign filtering process based on a plant found all over Mexico: the nopal cactus or prickly pear.

a6539_1493.jpg

WATER FILTER. This nopal cactus could help Mexican communities purify drinking water.
Alcantar

Latin American communities once used the cactus (Opuntia ficus indica) to filter water, says Alcantar. After boiling the edible plant, they dumped the pot water into a separate vessel containing drinking water, a practice that caused gritty particles to settle to the bottom. But this is "knowledge that is almost gone" in Mexican homes, she says.

Alcantar and her group suspected that the nopal could provide a solution for Mexican villages with contaminated groundwater.

Cactus goo purifies water: Science News Online, Sept. 17, 2005

[Larv]

I wonder how soon icebergs will be seen as a freshwater resource and humans start towing them up or down from the poles to serve that purpose in critical areas.

—Larv

[TheBigDog]

Originally Posted by Larv

I wonder how soon icebergs will be seen as a freshwater resource and humans start towing them up or down from the poles to serve that purpose in critical areas.

—Larv

Brewter's Millions?

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by Larv

I wonder how soon icebergs will be seen as a freshwater resource and humans start towing them up or down from the poles to serve that purpose in critical areas.

—Larv

Well the chiselers are already at work in the name of....vodka

Cecil Stockley has run Twillingate Island Boat Tours in the ocean region known as Iceberg Alley for 20 years.

And too many times his tours have been interrupted with gunshots or chainsaws as harvesters try to break a berg into manageable pieces, he said.

"People come from all parts of the world to see an iceberg, and the last thing they want to see is somebody out there blasting it with a water cannon or shelling it so they can make vodka," he says.

Stockley said he has no problem with Iceberg Products making use of the ice, but asks that they do so offshore and gather ice that has calved off already.

"Once it comes off the berg it's free game for them to get their ice," he said. "There's lots of ice around here."

The berg battle prompted one online commentator to suggest that free sample bottles of vodka could dampen the controversy.

"I say if it creates jobs let them go ahead," wrote another visitor to the Newfoundland magazine, The Downhomer. "You can't recycle them. (They're) going to melt anyway."

CTV.ca | Squabble erupts over Nfld. iceberg harvesting

May your vodka be more pure than your waterborne infections! Cheers!

[Michaelangelica]

I thought vodka came from potatoes not icebergs?


World's mighty rivers on endangered list | Science & nature | The Australian

This story is from The Times
World's mighty rivers on endangered list

* Lewis Smith, Environment reporter
* March 20, 2007

THE Murray-Darling and nine other mighty rivers that inspired religions, civilisations and explorers are dying because of stresses put on them by mankind, the WWF said in a report published today.

Each of the 10 river systems is beset by man-made problems, including water being siphoned off, dams destroying ecosystems and pollution.

The other nine endangered river basins are said to be the Danube, Yangtze, Rio Grande, Salween, Nile, Indus, Ganges, Plata and Mekong.

They flow across six continents and the damage threatens the lives of people and wildlife, the WWF says.

About 41 per cent of the world’s population live in threatened river systems, and of the 10,000 species of freshwater animals and plants at least 20 per cent are already extinct.

“In the last 50 years we have altered ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any other period in history,” the report states. “Physical alteration, habitat loss and degradation, water extraction, overexploitation, pollution, and the introduction of invasive species threaten the planet’s freshwater ecosystems.”

Most river basins face multiple threats, and to draw up a list of the ten most endangered, the conservation charity used published reports and the judgment of its own experts. The list comprises river systems that have already suffered extensive damage and freshwater networks likely to be markedly changed over the next decade.

Australia’s Murray and Darling river system is under pressure from introduced species that are outcompeting native fish, which have suffered 90 per cent reductions in numbers in the past two centuries.

Central Europe's the Danube has already been severely damaged, having lost 80 per cent of its wetlands and floodplains.

In Asia, the Salween is one of only 21 of the world’s 177 longest rivers that still run freely from source to the sea. However, 16 large dams are planned for the river, and the alteration in the landscape could prove disastrous for wildlife.

Water extraction for agriculture, industry and domestic use is such a problem for the Rio Grande and the Ganges that there are shortages farther downstream, flow levels having fallen sharply.

Flow in the Ganges and the Indus is expected to be further reduced because of the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers, a trend attributed to global warming. “With climate warming, many glaciers will no longer exist to moderate the flow of these rivers,” the report says.

Overfishing is cited as another serious problem for rivers, notably the Mekong, which drains an area in Asia twice the size of Germany.

Similarly, pollution from rapid economic development is blamed for the deterioration of the Yangtze. “The Yangtze used to be so clear that you could see a pen sink to the bottom. Now it has become so dirty that it is not fit for drinking,” the report says.

The WWF called on governments and businesses to take better care of their water supplies to ensure that they remain sustainable resources for people and wildlife.

David Tickner, head of the organisation’s freshwater program, said: “Unabated development is jeopardising nature’s ability to meet our growing demands. The world is facing a massive freshwater crisis, which has the potential to be every bit as devastating as climate change.

“Conservation of rivers and wetlands and security of water flows must be seen as part and parcel of national security, health and economic success.

”

[Michaelangelica]

I thought vodka came from potatoes not icebergs?


World's mighty rivers on endangered list | Science & nature | The Australian

This story is from The Times
World's mighty rivers on endangered list

* Lewis Smith, Environment reporter
* March 20, 2007

THE Murray-Darling and nine other mighty rivers that inspired religions, civilisations and explorers are dying because of stresses put on them by mankind, the WWF said in a report published today.

Each of the 10 river systems is beset by man-made problems, including water being siphoned off, dams destroying ecosystems and pollution.

The other nine endangered river basins are said to be the Danube, Yangtze, Rio Grande, Salween, Nile, Indus, Ganges, Plata and Mekong.

They flow across six continents and the damage threatens the lives of people and wildlife, the WWF says.

About 41 per cent of the world’s population live in threatened river systems, and of the 10,000 species of freshwater animals and plants at least 20 per cent are already extinct.

“In the last 50 years we have altered ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any other period in history,” the report states. “Physical alteration, habitat loss and degradation, water extraction, overexploitation, pollution, and the introduction of invasive species threaten the planet’s freshwater ecosystems.”

Most river basins face multiple threats, and to draw up a list of the ten most endangered, the conservation charity used published reports and the judgment of its own experts. The list comprises river systems that have already suffered extensive damage and freshwater networks likely to be markedly changed over the next decade.

Australia’s Murray and Darling river system is under pressure from introduced species that are outcompeting native fish, which have suffered 90 per cent reductions in numbers in the past two centuries.

Central Europe's the Danube has already been severely damaged, having lost 80 per cent of its wetlands and floodplains.

In Asia, the Salween is one of only 21 of the world’s 177 longest rivers that still run freely from source to the sea. However, 16 large dams are planned for the river, and the alteration in the landscape could prove disastrous for wildlife.

Water extraction for agriculture, industry and domestic use is such a problem for the Rio Grande and the Ganges that there are shortages farther downstream, flow levels having fallen sharply.

Flow in the Ganges and the Indus is expected to be further reduced because of the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers, a trend attributed to global warming. “With climate warming, many glaciers will no longer exist to moderate the flow of these rivers,” the report says.

Overfishing is cited as another serious problem for rivers, notably the Mekong, which drains an area in Asia twice the size of Germany.

Similarly, pollution from rapid economic development is blamed for the deterioration of the Yangtze. “The Yangtze used to be so clear that you could see a pen sink to the bottom. Now it has become so dirty that it is not fit for drinking,” the report says.

The WWF called on governments and businesses to take better care of their water supplies to ensure that they remain sustainable resources for people and wildlife.

David Tickner, head of the organisation’s freshwater program, said: “Unabated development is jeopardising nature’s ability to meet our growing demands. The world is facing a massive freshwater crisis, which has the potential to be every bit as devastating as climate change.

“Conservation of rivers and wetlands and security of water flows must be seen as part and parcel of national security, health and economic success.

”

[Monomer]

Some info on how the CSIRO's tackling the water issue:

There are many opportunities to improve water use efficiency and harvest large volumes of wastewater and stormwater that currently enter the ocean and waterways. However, technical, regulatory, public health and perception constraints limit current applications.

CSIRO, the Water Corporation and a number of organisations are working together to investigate improvements in the quality of reclaimed water using managed aquifer recharge.

PDF: http://www.csiro.au/files/files/p3tn.pdf

Water supplies in urban and industrial environments are prone to biological, chemical and radiological contaminants which can affect supplies for drinking water and irrigation.

CSIRO’s research and findings have significantly improved the process and design of remediation systems using air sparging and multiphase extraction, resulting in multi-million dollar operational savings for industry. In addition, the reduced risk to human health and improved protection of the environment is of great benefit.

Improving processes for flushing contaminants from groundwater (Achievement)

Water availability across Australia is being mapped in research that will help farmers and water managers prepare for drought, and use natural resources both productively and sustainably.

The Australian Water Availability Project (Profile - Project)

[Michaelangelica]

i would have thought the USA would have enough problems of its own?

US and China Increase Efforts to Protect China's Water Resources

The U.S. and China signed an agreement March 27 to expand the cooperative program that provides U.S. technical assistance to help improve and protect water quality and access to safe and sustainable water resources in China. Increasing water conservation and efficiency in China will also help reduce energy consumption and air pollution locally and globally.

"This U.S.-China watershed agreement strengthens our partnership and advances the Bush Administration's agenda for sustainable economic development and environmental protection," said EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Benjamin H. Grumbles.

China faces mounting water resource challenges. Under this agreement, EPA will collaborate with China to explore better management solutions through technical assistance to improve the health and accessibility of China's water resources. The agreement provides a framework for cooperation between the countries in the following areas:

US and China Increase Efforts to Protect China's Water Resources

[hallenrm]

Here's a link to an interesting article entitled Water, Past present and future. Although the focus of the author is the water problem in India, I believe it would be useful for some people participating in this rather long discussion!