Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The importance of
Water
Rafael Ramirez, Jilian Lamprecht
6/5/2016
Table of Contents
I.
Introduction
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
Conclusion
VII. Bibliography
p. 2
p. 14
p. 15
I.
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Introduction
II.
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Water is vital to the survival of everything on the planet. But even though
the Earth might seem having abundant water, less than 1 percent is
readily available for human use.
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When using washing machines, wash only full loads of laundry or use
the appropriate water level
Check for leaks in your toilets, faucets and hoses, and then fix them
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Almost 700'000 liters of water per household could be saved each year if
everybody respected these few rules.
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By cooking more food than we can eat, we have to throw away leftovers
that have needed a lot of water to be produced.Similarly, a huge quantity
of water can be saved by eating some aliments instead of others.In this
way, replacing 500 grams of beef by 500 grams of vegeatables each week
represents a saving of more than 350000 liters of water annualy.As
second example, drinking one cup of tea instead of one cup of coffee per
day saves 35000 liters of water a year.To sum up, there is not one big
solution that can solve every water-related problem in the world. Instead, if
little actions and principles are carried out by everybody, big changes can
be made.
III.
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The USA is one of the countries that consume the most water in the world,
with an average consumption of up to 1500 liters a day for a four-member
household. This is more than thrice the consumption per household of
most of the other countries. Thats because in most cases they do not use
water very intelligently.
Some cities like Las Vegas are even described as running out of water. But
the reality is different :
There are a lot of rumors on Las Vegas, like Las Vegas is going dry, Lake
Mead will run out of water by 2021, or Las Vegas is using more water
from Colorado River than its allowed. But in fact, all of these are false.
Even though the city consumes approximately 450 liters of water per
person each day, it has become, and Vegas people insist, a model of water
conservation in the American West.
Almost every single drop of water used indoors, and this all across the
valley, gets transported through about 3,200 kilometers of pipe to
treatment facilities, in which water is filtered, treated with bacteria that
break down harmful compounds, and exposed to ultraviolet light that
disinfects it. After that, its pumped back into Lake Mead, where the Las
Vegas water district can pump it again.
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Thanks to this system, the effects on the lakes level by indoor water use
are almost negated.
Changes have been brought to residences too. For more than fifteen years
now, the water district has been paying people to remove the grass from
their yards. (The current rate is $1.50 per square foot)
Moreover, strict standards have been agreed by homebuilders and the
Water Authority for new homes :
New houses that are built cannot have grass in their front yard
During the summer, you are not allowed to water your lawn between
11 a.m. and 7 p.m. These are the times of day when the sun is most likely
to evaporate water before it soaks into the ground
The Las Vegas Valley Water District also installed computerized monitors to
detect leaks in its self-contained water system. Thanks to these
installations, more than 1,600 underground leaks have been detected,
which have saved approximately 1 billion liters of water, which represents
enough water to supply 1,800 Vegas homes for a year. Authorities have
even been talking about a desalinization project.
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In the end, even though Las Vegas looks like it uses a lot of water, which is
true, it really cares about the amount it uses, and makes a lot of efforts to
limit the waste of water, given that water is vital for Las Vegas to thrive.
IV.
The sixth MDG is divided into different objectives, and objective 7C aims to
reduce the amount of people without sustainable access to adequate
sanitation and safe to drink water by half. If that objective is to be reached
by 2030, there needs to be a clear improvement to the quality and the
safety of small community water supplies in both developed and
developing countries.
About half of the worlds population lives in rural locations, and they are
usually supplied water by small community water supplies. These
supplies are mostly obsolete and outdated, which makes them prone to
contamination and breakdown. The biggest risk of an insecure water
source is an epidemic breakout, such as diarrhea or cholera. Both of these
diseases cause over 3 million deaths worldwide every year, and 88% of the
cases are caused by unsafe water in sanitation and hygiene.
To improve their water sources, isolated communities cannot bring in new
people to upgrade and maintain them, so the only option is for them to
learn manage them themselves. For this, the World health organization
(WHO) has come up with a safety plan that rural communities can be
introduced to easily.
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The water safety plan is divided into 6 tasks that once achieved, a water source should be
adequate to use by the population.
The first task, asks to assemble a water safety plan team. The entire
community cannot take care of the water supply, so a few people should
be chosen. The key to a good team is for the members to want to be there
for their own interest, instead of just having to be there because someone
chose them. Ideally the team should have members from various different
backgrounds, as well as some people that have used or known the water
source for a long time.
The second task asks to document the water source. The members of the
team should make maps, documents and charts showing where their water
source is and what path the pipelines follow. It is also important to specify
what type of source it is, whether it is a surface source or an underground
one. The map should be detailed and show all of the potential hazards
such as factories or chemical plants as well as where the water collection
or catchment areas are. With these maps the team will be able to better
manage their water source in the upcoming steps.
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The third step is one of the most important, in this step the water safety
team should identify all of the hazards that could harm the water, or that
have disturbed the supply in the past. Some risks might be defective water
tanks, torrential rain opening up paths for microbial pathogens, open
defecation or simply and unguarded and unprotected source that all
animals and all the population can use at their leisure.
In the fourth part the water safety plan the team will be repairing adjusting
and improving its source, to overcome all of the risks seen in the previous
step. The funding should come from the government, or a community
budget, and in the worst case from volunteering. Some of the usual
improvements seen from other communities are building fences around
their water sources, and covering them if they are exposed. By the end of
this step the water source should be fully protected and operational.
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The fifth and sixth steps revolve around monitoring the water source to
make sure that the improvements work properly to provide safe drinkingwater, and establishing a team that will periodically re-do the steps in the
plan to secure a reliable water supply. With these steps the water safety
plan should have been achieved.
With the plan seen above small communities can get together to improve
the water for the good of everybody and many illnesses and deaths can be
avoided.
V.
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These statistics might seem completely frightening and unreal, but they
are all absolutely correct.
It represents the sad truth of our actual world. In a society that never stops
improving, there are still people who lack of the most primal needs, while
some other have an incalculable amount of it.
Today, only 67% of the worlds population has access to sanitation (2.4
billion people have not), and 1 in 9 people (783 million) do not have access
to clean water.
The consequences are numerous (not exhaustive):
Women and children spend between 4 and 6 hours walking for water
each day instead of going to school of working
Water is often dirty and makes them and their families sick
Lack of water for irrigation causes heavy loss of crops
Girls give up school at their puberty because of the lack of sanitation
These are just a few examples of the difficulties of these peoples lives, but
what interests us is how we can help ourselves to get through these
problems.
Various organizations exist whose main goal is to provide these people
with clean, safe water to ensure their basic need for drinking, cooking and
cleaning.
By doing this, they can completely change peoples lives, because the
access to clean water in their countries could:
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Improve Education
Instead of gathering water, the children can return to class. They will have
a better chance of obtaining a good employment as adults.
Plus, with proper and safe sanitation, girls can stay in school through their
teenage years.
Improve Health
In these countries, the leading cause of illness and death is diarrhea, which
is caused by unsafe drinking water, lack of access to sanitation facilities
and inadequate availability of water for hygiene. By providing people with
safe water, we allow them to wash their hand, their body, and have
adequate sanitation. The diseases and the deaths would therefore be
reduced.
Reduce Hunger
Enough water for irrigation leads to food security. With less crops loss,
hunger is reduced, and healthy food is ensured for everyone.
Plus, women who no longer spend hours each day fetching water can
spend time working or growing food for their family.
VI.
Conclusion
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VII.
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Bibliography
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