Water: Where will it come from in 2050?

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by Star30

You are so right. In primitive times the people would pack up and move to find food, to hunt. [/url]

Thanks

I'd like to see us pack up and move NY Toko cairo or even Sydney.

A World of Thirst
Poor sanitation. Pollution. Wasteful irrigation. The planet's freshwater supply is terribly managed
By Bret Schulte
Posted 5/27/07

Over the course of the past 40 years, north Africa's Lake Chad has shriveled to one tenth its earlier size, beset by decades of drought and agricultural irrigation that have sucked water from the rivers that feed it—even as the number of people whose lives depend on its existence has grown.

In 1990, the Lake Chad basin supported about 26 million people; by 2004 the total was 37.2 million. In the next 15 years, experts predict, the incredible shrinking lake and its tapped rivers will need to support 55 million. "You don't have much room for error at this point," says hydrologist Michael Coe.
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The population growth has coincided with a 25 percent decrease in rainfall, with global warming very likely a factor. As oceans store more heat, the temperature difference between water and land dissipates, sapping power from rainmaking monsoons.

At the same time, desperate people are overusing wells. Coe recently concluded that water supplies in the basin are "stretched to their limits, and future needs will far outstrip the accessible supply."
. . .
. . .
In a report issued in November, the United Nations declared water "a global crisis," announcing that 55 member nations are failing to meet their water-related Millennium Development Goal target, agreed upon in 2000, of halving the proportion of people without clean water and sanitation by 2015.
. . .
One percent. Just 3 percent of the world's water is fresh. Of that, most is locked in the ground, glaciers, or ice caps.
That leaves about 1 percent for the world's 6.6 billion people.

Wasteful Irrigation, Poor Sanitation, and Pollution Plague the World's Freshwater Supply - US News and World Report

Date:25/03/2007

Climate change, pollution, over extraction of water and development are killing some of the world's most famous rivers including China's Yangtze, India's Ganges and Africa's Nile, conservation group WWF said on Tuesday.

Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi
Date: 25/03/2007

Another first for the UAE was highlighted at the Middle East Power & Water Conference 2007, with the seven emirates edging near the top of the global index for the highest water consumption per capita.

"The UAE has 114 water dams with a joint capacity of 118 million cubic metres of rain water.
Meanwhile, desalination pants for both drinking and industrial use provide an annual supply of 950 million cubic metres,"

Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi
(How much does all the extra dam-lakes, desalinated water, flood irrigation etc being used by agriculture and sweated & peed out by a few billion extra people effect global warming over the last 50-100 years? (Water vapour humidity is the major GHG. Has anyone ever measured it like we do CO2?)

[Monomer]

I read this in our latest newsletter:

A team of CSIRO researchers and partners have created drinking water fit for a Prime Minister out of stormwater previously left to flow down the gutter.

CSIRO Land and Water's Water Use and Reuse team at Urrbrae, led by Dr Peter Dillon, collected and bottled the water from a suburban Adelaide aquifer in what is believed to be the first urban stormwater to be bottled as safe drinking water in Australia.

Prime Minister John Howard, Environment and Water Resources Minister Malcolm Turnbull and CSIRO Chief Executive Dr Geoff Garrett were amongst the first to drink the water at a meeting of the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council (PMSEIC) in Canberra on June 22.

The water was collected from reed bed-treated urban stormwater from Salisbury, SA, which had been stored in a limestone aquifer for 12 months and recovered. It is 93 per cent stormwater from 2005 and seven per cent brackish native groundwater, estimated to be 10,000 yrs old.

It was rigorously tested and meets all drinking water criteria. Risk assessment and management was performed by Senior Research Scientist Dr Declan Page.

The bottling aimed to demonstrate the work of the Aquifer Storage Transfer and Recovery (ASTR) project, which involves CSIRO, United Water, the City of Salisbury, SA Water and the SA Department of Land, Water and Biodiversity Conservation.

"We are trying to show the value of what we currently let flow down our gutters by developing the demonstration project and also management frameworks that can be replicated," Dr Dillon says.

"There is potential for 250GL of this water to be harvested a year in the three cities studied so far, and the cost is less than current mains water supplies if the flood mitigation and land value benefits are also considered."

Dr Dillon, who was at the July 22 meeting where Dr Garrett presented Mr Howard a bottle of the water, says he hopes this project will change the way people treat stormwater.

"I hope people who drink this water will see stormwater differently and value it as a precious resource," Dr Dillon says.

"Cities are highly effective catchments yielding at least 4000 times more run-off per hectare than the Murray Basin. In most Australian capitals more water flows down gutters than is supplied through mains.

"Stormwater harvesting, along with rainwater tanks, are the most greenhouse-friendly approach to water supply expansion, and belong in the portfolio of solutions advocated to PMSEIC.

"Some governments have yet to establish drought and emergency supplies, but in the meantime councils with vision and suitable aquifers are able to reduce demand on city water supplies on a commercial footing.

"Ultimately we have shown potential for this water to go into mains supplies. Further research is required to validate this and then make these methods available."

There was a link to this website ASTR: Welcome to the Aquifer Storage Transfer and Recovery

[Star30]

Good to know, Good post Monomer. I don't know why this hasn't been implemented already.

Michaelangelica, I was just saying, I wouldn't move to a place with issues I couldn't find a solution(s) for as I would move away from the same. That's not to say I wouldn't give it my all, but come on...

[Michaelangelica]

Saturday, April 21, 2007
NIOT's OTEC-based Desalination Plant

Chennai-based National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) has achieved a world's first in sustainable technology by building a floating water desalination plant. But what's so great about putting a desalination plant on a barge? The uniqueness is in the detail of the technology used.

The Technology

"The plant is mounted on a 65-metre-long by 16-metre-thick barge. The ocean's surface water is boiled inside a vacuum container. The vapour created in the flash boil process is condensed through a refrigeration process with the help of deep-sea water collected from nearly 600 metres below the surface of the sea."

Thus this plant benefits from NIOT's cutting edge research and plans on OTEC, a fledgling clean energy technology which has huge potential. OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion) is a method to use the energy difference between the surface of the ocean, which is exposed to the sun, and the water at lower levels, which not being exposed to the sun is much cooler.

The temperature of the water 600m below the surface was one third of the temperature at the surface, but bringing it to the surface presented the biggest challenge of the project. The water was brought up using one meter thick HDPE pipes, which come in 12m lengths, and when assembled the 600m stretch weighed 100 tonnes. Further the salinity of the seawater would make the pipes float, necessitating the attachment of heavy weights. The salinity however is useful in another way - the clean water is filled into water bags each capable of holding 200,000 liters, which were then easily towed to the shore since clean water floats on saline water.

The Indic View: NIOT's OTEC-based Desalination Plant - India Energy and Infrastructure

New Chinese solar de-salinator
But our device makes use of solar power. The only costs are the heliostat system and the infrastructure construction. It is the most economical and eco-friendly desalination method invented so far," said Zhou.

Furthermore, a special heliostat, invented by a scientist in the team, costs only a quarter of the normal price but still generates the same amount of energy, Zhou told China Daily.

Zhou did not reveal the exact cost for fresh water production, but said it would definitely be much lower than the current technologies,

Device offers end to fresh water shortage

desalination plant by environmental graffiti, a uk based environmental blog

The French utility services group Veolia has won a contract worth 702 million euros (945 million dollars) to design and build a water desalination plant in Saudi Arabia. The plant is expected to be completed by 2010 and will desalinate 800,000 cubic meters of water per day. Saudi Arabia already produces 24% of the total world capacity of freshwater using desalination.

Hugg /

[Michaelangelica]

A home-made grey water system.
Perhaps not suitable for a small suburban garden?
But an interesting article and project anyhow
Greywater Ecuador La lagrima purificadora - Appropedia: The sustainability wiki

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (KCBS) -- California voters could decide as early as February whether to spend billions of dollars to build dams and a canal to divert water around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Monday.The governor's plan includes $4.5 billion for two reservoirs, $1 billion for a canal and $450 million for water conservation efforts.

Will Halliburton build them?
KCBS - Gov Pushes New Water Plan

[Michaelangelica]

Lighter Footstep: Five Things that are Worse than Global Warming

The Coming Water Crisis


The Coming Water Crisis

From the oceans we turn our attention to an even rarer resource: fresh water. Of all the water on earth, less than 3% is fresh.
Of this, some 70% is locked in glaciers and polar ice. Our survival depends on the tiny bit which is left.
Over a billion people already lack access to a safe supply of adequate drinking water.
These numbers will increase with world population. Here, again, is a clear link to climate change: as rainfall patters shift, so does the availability of fresh water.
But the real crisis is this: right now, our largest cities depend heavily on groundwater. Beijing, Buenos Aires, Mexico City -- and perhaps your own community -- draws its water from underground aquifers.
These aquifers take centuries to replenish, so it's unlikely their use on this scale is sustainable. The recent corporatization of drinking water is no accident: investors recognize the trends of shrinking supply and increasing demand.
This is the reason multinational companies are snapping up neglected municipal water infrastructures and throwing themselves into the bottled water business. Water is the Blue Gold of the 21st century.
How will we replace shrinking fresh water supplies? Desalinization of sea water is an obvious answer, but desalinization is expensive energy intensive. It would require the development of a distribution system that dwarfs the one by which we currently bring petroleum to market. We will have to seek out new ways to reprocess wastewater and reduce our current demand on groundwater supplies.
While changes will necessarily trickle down to the household level and will be neither cheap nor convenient, they are unavoidable if we wish to sustain our current rate of population growth.
There are no equivalents to carbon credits when it comes to water: you can't pay someone not to consume water on your behalf.
When it comes to dwindling fresh water supplies, there can be no smoke and mirrors. Stop drinking for a day, and you'll realize the pressing nature of thirst. The recent drought in the American Southwest and the threat of water rationing in places like Los Angeles are a preview of things to come.

Lighter Footstep: Five Things that are Worse than Global Warming | Green Options

[Michaelangelica]

You don't think of canada as being short of water

According to The Council of Canadians, currently in Canada, there are over 80 First Nations communities that do not have fresh tap water that is safe to drink. All water must be boiled before consuming in order to kill the harmful bacteria.
. . .
The United States is pressuring Canada to export water in bulk. A Washington think tank, called the Global Water and Energy Strategy Team, announced that bulk water exports from Canada will take place, because of our economic need to trade with the U.S., within the next couple of years.

Several American oil extraction industries are steering the Canadian government toward building a freshwater pipeline between Manitoba and Texas, for the purpose of extracting oil from the ground. This commercial use of freshwater will drain our existing supply of drinking water.

Canada is currently short of water. Presently, we have a ban on waste water use that forbids our own residents to turn a sprinkler on at night to water our lawns and gardens.

So if you use less chemical fertiliser in your garden you will need less water?
Mulch and organic matter must help but fertiliser?

"In many fertilizers you find ammonia. Ammonia is a salt; it dehydrates the life in the soil," Meyer said. "Over time, you will kill life in the soil and cause it to dehydrate."
. . .
"It is alive with all these things that, when it breaks down, provide nutrients plants are designed to take up," Meyer said.

Soil enriched with organic matter is better able to retain moisture, making the drudgery of watering less frequent, he said.

MLive.com: Everything Michigan

[Michaelangelica]

Big argument about Sydney's proposed de-sal plant.
It is very expensive
Still can't work out why they can't use base load electricty in Power plants

QUENTIN DEMPSTER: With the drought and expected crop failure in the Murray-Darling Basin, fruit and vegetable prices are expected to rise sharply soon.

With a carbon trading scheme coming no matter who wins the federal election electricity prices are also expected to rise significantly.

From June next year water prices for consumers in Greater Sydney, the Blue Mountains, Wollongong and the Illawarra, covering about 4.5 million people could rise by 30 per cent and more if you are a big water user.

Equipped with a state election mandate to build a $1.8 billion desalination plant at Kurnell, the Iemma government is now preparing the bill for consumers via its state-owned utility Sydney water.

Even if the desal plant is not needed to supplement drinking water, under the terms of the public private partnership consumers will pay to have it operationally ready.

A Sydney water submission to IPART, the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal this week revealed the fine print for the first time.

Shortly a studio debate.

First, the big water bill coming to a letter box near you.

At the moment the average household water bill is around $800 a year. To keep Sydney Water solvent and pay for the desalination plant which is to be expensively powered by renewable energy, and the big recycling schemes at Rouse Hill, Wollongong, St Marys and Fairfield, Sydney Water's asking IPART to approve a price rise per household of $275 over four years.
. . .
. . .
KERRY SCHOTT: If the desal plant's not operating, the cost of having it available and just being there is about $9 million per year and that's having the plant available and not producing any water.

The minute its producing water if it's going at full pelt, that's $55million. And the cost of water from the desal plant works out at 60 cents a kilolitre. And that compares to what I'm currently paying the catchment authority which is 56 cents a kilolitre. So its a little bit more expensive but its not that bad.

Stateline NSW
China running out of fresh water

For three decades, water has been indispensable in sustaining the rollicking economic expansion that has made China a world power. Now, China’s galloping, often wasteful style of economic growth is pushing the country toward a water crisis. Water pollution is rampant nationwide, while water scarcity has worsened severely in north China — even as demand keeps rising everywhere.

China is scouring the world for oil, natural gas and minerals to keep its economic machine humming. But trade deals cannot solve water problems. Water usage in China has quintupled since 1949, and leaders will increasingly face tough political choices as cities, industry and farming compete for a finite and unbalanced water supply.

One example is grain.
. . .
. . .
An economic powerhouse with more than 200 million people, it has limited rainfall and depends on groundwater for 60 percent of its supply. Other countries, like Yemen, India, Mexico and the United States, have aquifers that are being drained to dangerously low levels. But scientists say those below the North China Plain may be drained within 30 years.

“There’s no uncertainty,” said Richard Evans, a hydrologist who has worked in China for two decades and has served as a consultant to the World Bank and China’s Ministry of Water Resources. “The rate of decline is very clear, very well documented. They will run out of groundwater if the current rate continues.”

Water Scarcity Threatens China's Future - Environment - New York Times

[Michaelangelica]

Chemical film slows dam evaporation by 60pc: trials

Posted Tue Sep 4, 2007 2:05pm AEST

Australian laboratory trials of a new technology to reduce evaporation in dams has shown promising results.

Researchers are developing an ultra-thin chemical film to be placed on the surface of dams, and tests have shown it reduces evaporation loss by up to 60 per cent.

The film is made from a special biodegradable chemical that can be applied to dams every few days when evaporation rates are high.

Water authorities in south-east Queensland have calculated evaporation losses are equal to the annual consumption of 1.6 million households.

Project leader Professor David Solomon from Melbourne University told a conference today that the film offers a huge potential.

He says it has low environmental impact and is cost effective. More trials are planned in large public water storages and farm dams.

Chemical film slows dam evaporation by 60pc: trials - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

[Monomer]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

Chemical film slows dam evaporation by 60pc: trials - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

That's interesting - approacing the water problem from a different angle. That's a lot of water to lose though evaporation.

Water authorities in south-east Queensland have calculated evaporation losses are equal to the annual consumption of 1.6 million households.