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Our Disappearing Water
by
Anonymous
The world's dwindling sources of fresh water are in jeopardy. They are being threatened by
increasing water pollution from waste and by global warming. Each year cholera, dengue fever,
dysentery, and malaria take their toll, with
27,000 dead.
‘In the US alone, more than 900,000 people become ill each year from water-borne diseases and as many as 900 will die. As bad as the situation is
in the United States, it is worse in many other
developed countries and absolutely frightening in
Third World countries.’ a spokesperson for The
Natural Resources Defense Council said.
According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, US wetlands are disappearing at the rate of 60,000 acres per year. This according to
government calculations, whereas independent
assessments rate it much higher.
The NRDC stated on July 2001 that General Electric [GE manufacturing plants have
discharged an estimated 1.3 million pounds of
toxic chemicals known as PCB's into the Hudson
River in New York State and has fought to avoid
responsibility for cleaning it up. ‘---it remains unclear whether the Bush administration will
follow the guidance of science and adopt the plan
[EPA plan for cleaning the Hudson or whether it will accede to GE’s multi-million dollar lobbying
campaign to avoid liability for its legacy of
toxic pollution’ produced by the mining industry, energy companies, agribusiness, and various
manufacturers. There is also a huge problem of
sewage overflows. President Bush's decision will
set a precedent regarding cleanup of contaminated rivers, harbors and lakes in the US.
The Environmental Protection Agency [EPA estimates that 40% of waterways in the US do not
meet water quality standards. The majority of the
population lives within ten miles of a polluted lake, river, or coastal water body.
In South Africa 13 million people have no access to drinking water. Its new laws guarantee basic
water requirements for everybody and are a model.
Only then can any additional water demands, by mining companies or agricultural interests, or
residential users, be considered.
‘The impacts of water-related diseases on the world's children and the coming risks of climate
change are especially threatening. Changing
weather patterns may dump too much water into barren areas and leave our massive networks of
dams and reservoirs with only drops. We've got to
prepare for tomorrow today.’ states Peter Gleick,
author of ‘The World’s Water' and member of the
National Academy of Sciences Water Science and Technology Board and academician of the
International Water Academy of Oslo, Norway.
The population is rapidly increasing in the urban areas of Latin America and Asia where human wastes
contaminate ever-large portions of surface waters.
Industrialized nations have done much to clean up their sewer acts, thus nearly eliminating water-
related diseases while while industrial and
agricultural chemicals and pollutants are adding a
heavy toll on regional water quality.
‘Despite the pressing nature of these threats, water institutions and policy-makers have, so
far, been largely unable to develop the tools and
approaches needed to address these problems,’ the
authors said. ‘Sustainable use of fresh water requires a new dialogue on the ultimate ends to be
served by water management.'
Gleick also stated that ‘Improving the efficiency of our water systems, taking real steps to stem
global warming and opening the policy debate over water to new voices can all help turn the tide -
and that despite the pressing nature of these threats, water institutions and policy makers have
so far, been largely
unable to develop the tools and approaches needed to address these problems, that 'Sustainable use
of fresh water requires a new dialogue on the
ultimate ends to be served by water management.'
They state that solutions lie in increasing efficiency rather than building more dams and
reservoirs, that the impact of water-related
diseases on the world’s children and the coming risks of climate change are especially threatening.
Changing weather patterns may dump too much water into barren areas and leave our massive networks
of dams and reservoirs with only drops. We’ve got to prepare for tomorrow today', Gleick said - and
that ‘this is the 21st century’ and that 'there
are still 1.1 billion people without access to
clean water.’
The usual, long-time methods used to safeguard our water supply, dams, reservoirs and pipelines,
are making matters worse, Gleick said.
According to a detailed document commissioned by the UN Environment Program in Nairobi, Kenya,
published in early January, without a global commitment to a new ‘water ethic’, the world's
water supplies may dry up.
The 65-page paper states that a resurgence of water-related diseases - annually claiming five to
ten million lives, most of whom are children – two-thirds of the world's population, are at risk.
Millions of children are underweight because of water-borne diarrheal disorders, mentally and
physically handicapped and vulnerable to other
diseases. Cholera is rampant in most of Africa. Dengue fever has taken a hold in more than 100
countries in Africa, the Americas, the Eastern
Mediterranean, S.E. Asia and the Western
Pacific. It threatening 2.8 million people. Malaria is endemic in 101 countries, affects two
billion humans, with 300 million to 500 million
cases and one million deaths reported each year,
mainly young children in remote regions of Africa.
During the past century half of the world's wetlands and been lost to development and
conversion. These supported 10,000 species of fish and 4,000 species of amphibians. A recent
example of this is in Iraq where its unique fresh-
water marshes have been destroyed where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet. Dams, dikes,
levees, and other man-made structures destroy
these habitats.
Thirty five percent of all the freshwater fish are vulnerable or endangered. Three-fourths of the
139 largest river systems in North America, Europe, and the former Soviet Union, are heavily
or moderately affected by dams and other human
manipulations of water.
While water pollution laws in developed countries have spurred improvements in water quality in the
past few decades, drinking water in which untreated waste is discharged is still a leading
cause of illness in many developing nations.
According to a recent UN report, some 90-percent
of wastewater is still discharged untreated into
local rivers and streams. ‘The most pressing water problem is the utter failure to meet basic
human needs for water’, says Peter Gleick, director of the Pacific Institute, an Oakland-
based non-profit organization that specializes in global water issues.
A report from the World Resources Institute informs us that many developing countries under-
going rapid industrialization are being hit by a
double whammy: They're ‘now faced with the full range of modern toxic pollution problems – eutrophication, heavy metals, acidification,
persistent organic pollutants – while still struggling to deal with traditional problems of
poor water supply and lack of sanitation
services.’
Singh told UPI that ‘As a result, our fisheries are increasingly threatened, our migratory birds
are dying and migrations being disrupted, wetlands are being lost daily and the services
they provide are being disrupted. It is time that
the health of our natural ecosystems is
is considered a vital part of the overall system
and that decisions around water policy take such systems into account’.
Gleick said, as well, that ‘there are connections between poverty and inequity and violence and our
security.’ Increasingly, the US, and the world
community are called to provide peacekeeping troops or some sort of military response in areas
such as Haiti or Somalia where environmental
degradation and poverty are contributing
political instability and violence. ‘Water problems are an important part of that.' and
‘We’ll see more water-related disease and more
unnecessary death and more tensions and disputes over shared water resources and more surprises
from climate changes’ unless leaders act.
‘The world has made an enormous investment in dams, reservoirs, aqueducts, water treatment
facilities and other concrete structures---. --- other parts of the world depend on the vagaries
of the access to clean drinking water is a scandal of the hydrologic system - on rains that
may or may not come. The relative socioeconomic and environmental impact of both climatic and non-
climatic impacts on the supply and demand for water will depend in large part on the ability to
foresee major changes, to adapt to such changes, to be flexible in the face of probable surprises
and to be innovative in the management and allocation of water.’ the authors said.
California has, for the first time, incorporated climate projections into its 2002 assessment of
the states water systems.
‘Water crosses many borders: scientific, political, social and cultural. Humans have always
had trouble addressing cross-border issues, yet cooperation is essential.' Singh told UPI. 'This
study clearly conveys a sense of urgency about the
nature of the threats facing us. But it also
offers some clear guidance for how to move forward
in a collaborative, cooperative way, to develop appropriate policies for making sure that these
emerging threats to our water resources are
identified and successfully addressed in the coming years.’
According to a recent United Nations report, one-sixth of the world’s population - one billion
people - lack access to clean water, and that number is expected to double in the next 30 years.
‘A number of areas could enter a period of chronic shortages during this decade,including
much of Africa, northern China, pockets of India, Mexico, the Middle East and parts of western North
America,’ according to Sandra Postel, director of
the Global Water Policy Project in Amherst,
Massachusetts. Some 26 countries are now considered to be ‘water scarce’ - with fewer than
1,000 cubic meters of water available to each
person per year. The number of water-scarce countries are expected to rise to 35 by the year 2020.
In the century that has just drawn to a close, demand for fresh water grew twice as fast as
population growth - due in large part to the Green Revolution in agriculture and a rising
standard of living for many of the world’s people.
Increasing demand - along with centuries of poor water management and water pollution, rendering available resources unusable - created local water
shortages. Discussions about towing icebergs to
the Middle East and piping river water from
Alaska under the ocean to California aside, most cost-effective sources of new water 'development'
have already been tapped. Many countries are
feeling the competition over water: competition between different users within an area, and between man and nature. We must search for
solutions through conservation and equitable reallocation.
Water is becoming scarce in many parts of the world. According to the Worldwatch Institute,
groundwater over-pumping and aquifer depletion is now a serious problem in the world's most
intensive agricultural areas, including the
western United States, India and northern China. In heavily populated cities like Mexico City,
Bangkok and Jakarta, land is sinking as more
groundwater is withdrawn to supply the growing populations. This can’t be replenished by rain-
fall. ‘The Nile in Egypt, the Ganges in South Asia, the Yellow River in China and the Colorado
River in America are among the major rivers that are so dammed, diverted or over-tapped that little
or no fresh water reaches its final destination for significant stretches of time,’ writes Postel.
If we look at Israel and the West Bank we can see two different scenarios regarding water and where
our relationship with water is heading in the coming half century. The Israelis have grown rows
of orange trees and vegetable gardens, which they
irrigate with recycled wastewater from the cities. They irrigate their cotton and tomato
plants with seawater, which these plants thrive upon. They also know that this type of agriculture
is unsustainable over time. They reportedly plan
to transfer over one-third of their fresh water to
their cities and import more of their food, using income from the growing industrial sector.
Fifty miles away, in the West Bank many Palestinians lack running water. They have to buy
their water from trucks or use cisterns to collect what little rainwater falls, although they
are sitting on top of the West Bank aquifer. This
aquifer supplies 25-percent of Israel's water, but
the Palestinians are forbidden by Israeli authorities to drill wells to reach this water. Policymakers are beginning to talk about water
replacing oil as a major cause of war in the
coming decades, and where such water-sharing tensions abound, these places are considered hot
spots for such conflicts.
More than 50-per cent of irrigation water is lost to runoff and evaporation in some countries. This
problem could be eliminated by using drip irrigation systems, which were pioneered by Israeli farmers. This system delivers water
directly to the plants’ roots as needed.
In the Ogallala aquifer, extending from South Dakota to the Texas Panhandle, farmers use water-
efficient irrigation methods. Though this area sustains one of the largest breadbaskets and beef-
producing regions in the US, its underground water supply may be depleted within 50 to 60
years, because it is replenished at such a slow rate that it’s considered to be a fossil aquifer.
In some areas, fairly good quality groundwater is used for irrigation while expensive treatment of
contaminated surface water is used for domestic
domestic supply. When water allocation decisions are made, agriculture gets the larger share.
In nearly every place where people have exploited water for human needs, natural ecosystems have
suffered. California is overlaid with an intricate network of dams, reservoirs, pumps and
aqueducts, and poisoned by fertilizer and pesticide runoff. 40 out of 49 native fish species
are extinct or at risk of extinction.
‘Watersheds with the highest biological value – measured by the number of fish species and endemic
fish species, as well as the number of areas with endemic birds - are also generally the most
degraded,’ says Carmen Revenga, one of the authors of the World Resources Institute’s
recently released report on international water-
sheds. ‘Many biologically rich watersheds – particularly in southeast Asia and China - also
have high population densities, high levels of
modified and irrigated lands, and high rates of deforestation, especially in tropical areas.'
In the US freshwater fish species are declining. ‘The US is the epicenter of freshwater
biodiversity in the world,’ says Larry Masters, chief zoologist at The Nature Conservancy. 'That
means we have a very significant responsibility in
terms of the world of fresh-water bio-diversity.'
A recent Nature Conservancy report, Rivers of Life, wrote a proposal to protect just 15-percent
of US watersheds to conserve all freshwater fish
and mussel species at risk. In the US, 37-percent of freshwater fish are at risk of extinction, 51-percent of cray-fish and 40-percent of amphibians
are threatened, and 67-percent of freshwater
mussels are extinct or threatened with extinction.
The question is, will the world's poorest people receive their fair share of water as water prices increase? During the major drought in Indonesia in 1994, when residents' wells ran dry, Jakarta's
golf courses, catering to wealthy tourists,
continued to receive 1,000 cubic meters of water
per day. Will the free market consider the needs of rural communities or of the orangenacre mucket
and dozens of other freshwater mussels that are
threatened by logging and agriculture in the
Southeast. Will international rules be put in place whereby countries will share water with
their neighbors downstream or with their less
powerful neighbors?
Federico Mayor, director-general of UNESCO, says ‘throughout history humans have responded to
the need to pool their efforts and share resources in the interests of larger security.
Water, in particular, has been one of humanity’s
historic learning grounds for community building.
We should see it as a potential source, not of conflict, but of agreements...for the transition
from a culture of war to a culture of peace.’
‘There it is. Take it!’ said Mulholland. Perhaps this century's counterpart will say, 'There it is.
Let's share it!’ CONTACT:
International Rivers Network, 1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA
94703/ (510) 848-1155; The Nature Conservancy, 1815 North Lynn Street, Arlington, VA 22209/
(703)841-5300; World Resources Institute, 1709 New York Avenue NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC
20006/(202) 638-6300.
The survival of the West’s aquatic ecosystems in rivers, lakes and wetlands is threatened, along
with shortages of supply. ‘We have crashing ecosystems in every river basin in the West, ---
We have declining species where we don't already
have endangered and threatened listed species.'
says Steve Glazer, chair of the Sierra Club’s Colorado River Task Force. Runoff from farm
pesticides and fertilizers - along with manmade
river diversions like dams – now pose an
increasing problem to aquatic species that depend
on freshwater ecosystems.
In the San Joaquin Valley, which supports a $6.82 billion agriculture industry, an Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) study found 49 pesticides
in the rivers and tributaries, groundwater
contamination, and elevated levels of DDT in the San Joaquin Valley, which supports a $6.82 billion
agriculture industry. Sacramento-San Joaquin delta
once the largest wetland on the west coast, has
shrunk enormously, its waters diverted to California. The Colorado River is so over-
subscribed on its journey through seven US states that there's virtually nothing left to go out to
sea. The lack of freshwater flow has endangered the delta in Mexico - an important marine eco-
system and stopover for waterfowl on the Pacific
flyway - where the river flowed into the ocean in
the upper Gulf of Mexico.
‘There are 50 or 60 endangered fish species identified in the West, and many are in areas
important to irrigated agriculture,’ says Sandra Postel, ‘and it's very clear that if there's an
identified endangered species in a river, steps
have to be taken to protect the habitat of that
river. And that tends to affect water rights, which in the West are considered firm property
rights.’ CONTACT: American Rivers, 1025 Vermont
Avenue NW, Suite 720, Washington, DC
20005/(202)347-7550; Clean Water Network, 1200 New York Avenue NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC
20005/(202)289-2395.
The future of those lakes--Michigan, Superior, Huron, Erie and Ontario - is sparking a new
environmental battle. Congressman Bart Stupak [R., Mich. was one of the first public officials
to sound the alarm in 1998 when he opposed
provisions of NAFTA that allowed the international
marketing of Great Lakes water. We are now being forced to face a hard, uneasy truth: In parts of
the world, a gallon of water already costs more
than a gallon of oil. As the World Bank recently told its constituents, future wars will be fought
over water, not oil.
The Great Lakes basin, populated by over 40 million people, is at the center of this collision
of economic interests and environmental politics.
The five Great Lakes hold more than 6,000 trillion gallons of water, about one-fifth of the world’s fresh surface water supply. Residents in
both the US and Canada rely heavily on these
heavily on these lakes not only for recreation and transportation, but for drinking and food.
In terms of surface area, Lake Huron, including Georgian Bay, is the second-largest Great Lake and
the third-largest freshwater lake in the world. Its coastal landscape offers some of the most
pristine and spectacular vistas in the entire basin. Its watershed covers over 45,000 square miles. Today, lack of attention to habitat destruction and continued sewage and storm water
discharges threaten its ecosystem. But it is the proliferation of what scientists call exotic or
‘alien’ species that holds the most terrifying scenario for the future.
The introduction of the zebra and quagga mussels through ballast water of ships is a very recent
phenomenon, part of the shadow side of a globalized economy. Ships carry cargo to the
Great Lakes from harbours thousands of miles away.
When taking on new cargoes at American and
Canadian ports, they discharge water that was initially taken up during loading. In 1988 these
shellfish arrived in Lake St. Clair via ballast
water from Europe and Asia. Soon they were carried
into the rest of the Great Lakes Basin.
Zebra and quagga mussels cement themselves to solid objects - buoys, boat hulls, boat engines,
docks, and rocks, even plants. They filter enormous quantities of lake water, straining out
all the microscopic food other lake residents
depend upon. They clog intake pipes and municipal water filtering systems. And they have no natural
predators. Much of the western shore of Lake Erie is layered with this razor-sharp shellfish. On
some beaches it’s necessary to wear swimming shoes or boots to protect one's feet. The
International Joint Commission is on a desperate
hunt to find a way to stop these mussels and other
alien species from changing the water quality of the lakes.
It's long been confirmed that severe pollution has caused tumors and deformities in fish and
wildlife in the basin, but scientists are now finding lesions and cancers in animals collected
from locations that were thought to be
uncontaminated. There is debate over whether these
are natural occurrences or the result of a more insidious and unrecognized combination of manmade
toxins. Among the more lethal of these combined
chemical pollutants are those known as endocrine-
disrupters, which mimic the action of estrogen in animal and human life.
Now authorities are forced to acknowledge the extent of environmental damage. For years it's
been known [but not widely publicized that lake
trout cannot naturally reproduce in Lake Michigan.
Unrestricted development of Lake Michigan’s wetlands continues to destroy sensitive habitat,
but even more serious is the threat of alien species [plants, parasites, fish that have been
been introduced in ballast water from international ships. Some of these non-native
species have already made drastic changes to the Great Lakes’ ecosystem. In an attempt to turn one
of these alien predators into economic profit,
Minnesota's Sea Grant tried to market the lakes'
sea lamprey in Portugal where they’re prized as expensive delicacies. The proposal collapsed.
Because of industrial toxins discharged into the
basin, lamprey from the Great Lakes were found to
have mercury levels too high to meet European Union standards for consumption.
Since World War 11, 70,000 synthetic chemicals have been created, thousands of which take
hundreds or even thousands of years to break down in the environment. We know now that mutations are
inevitable because human and animal do not know
how to react to thousands of these chemicals, most of which find their way into our watersheds.
As medical leaders observe the contamination in
birds and fish in the Great Lakes region, they
are beginning to acknowledge the evidence. The National Institutes of Health agree that at least
80-percent of human cancers are environmentally
triggered.
A spokesperson for The Natural Resources Defense Council said, ‘In the US alone, more than
900,000 people become ill each year from water-borne diseases and as many as 900 will die. As bad
as the situation is in the United States, it is worse in many other developed countries and
absolutely frightening in Third World
countries.’
The world's supply of freshwater remains roughly constant, at about two and one-half percent of all
water, and of that, almost two-thirds is stored in ice caps and glaciers, inaccessible to humans;
what must change is how we use the available supply. Humans have grown so numerous that the
usual response to anticipated water scarcity – to increase supply with dams, aqueducts, canals, and
wells - is beginning to push against an absolute limit.
In the developed world widespread water shortages are projected but not yet broadly experienced.
In the developing world the crisis has already arrived. As many as 1.2 billion people – one out of five, on the globe – lack access to clean
drinking water. Nearly three billion live without
sanitation: no underground sewage, toilets, or even latrines. More than five million people a
year die of easily preventable waterborne diseases
such as diarrhea, dysentery, and cholera; in fact,
most disease in the developing world is water-related. As Peter Gleick writes in The World's
Water 1998-1999, 'For nearly three billion people,
access to a sanitation system comparable to that
of ancient Rome would be a significant improvement
in their quality of life.’
‘The overriding lesson from history is that most irrigation-based civilizations fail,' writes
Sandra Postel in her compelling survey of the global water crisis, Pillar of Sand: Can the
Irrigation Miracle Last? ‘As we enter the third
millennium A.D., the question is: Will ours be any
different?’ Groundwater depletion, says the
International Water Management Institute, a World Bank-supported group in Sri Lanka, is ‘the single most serious problem in the entire field of water
resources management.... Many of the most populous
countries of the world - China, India, Pakistan, Mexico and nearly all of the countries of the
Middle East and North Africa – have literally been having a free ride over the past two or three
decades by depleting their groundwater resources. The penalty of mismanagement of this valuable
resource is now coming due, and it is no exaggeration to say that the results could be
catastrophic for these countries and, given their
importance, for the world as a whole.’ Of China's
30,000 miles of major rivers, 80 percent are too polluted to support fish.
The Lake Superior Binational Forum recently confirmed that the significant portion of toxic
substances in the lake is now caused by pollution
from agricultural runoff, storm water, chemical spills and atmospheric deposition [sometimes
referred to as ‘atmospheric loading’. This deposit of pollutants arrives in the form of rain
and moisture from sources sometimes thousands of miles away. Both countries have begun to recognize
that we live in a global web of life more complex than anyone has ever imagined. If we are to
transform and heal these environmental wounds, we will have to make fundamental and sacrificial
changes in lifestyle, values and economic expectations. Without a spiritual foundation for
these efforts, it may be impossible to find common
ground. ‘Self-correction’ often takes hundreds, if
not thousands, of years. In the process those
species that cannot adapt become extinct.
During the brutal redemptive processes of the earth’s natural cycles, there is no guarantee that
the quality of human life as we know it – in spite of our technology - will be able to sustain
itself. It's not the water of the Great Lakes we finally have to worry about. It's ourselves.' Jon
Magnuson, a Lutheran pastor, is a member of the Lake Superior Binational Forum, a program of the
International Joint Commission of Canada and the United States. He lives in Marquette, Michigan.
Ensuring safe, clean drinking water has always been difficult, and during the past 100 years,
delivering dean water has become vastly more complex. Thousands of new chemicals, developed for
industrial, agricultural and home use, have been
released into the environment. Many of these have
seeped into the water supplies. And some are toxic. Even deep groundwater has been affected.
Resources:
NRDC 2001
http://www.nrdc.org/water/pollution/cwcc/cwcc.pdg
http://www.cwi.no/cwi/water.html
http://www.nrdc.org/water/default.asp
http://www.nrdc.org/water/asp/pollution/cwcc/cwccinx.asp
[July 2001
July 23 2001
Feb 1 2002
http://www.chron.com/content/houston/interactive/special/water/overview/sun.2-3.html
Ministerial Segment of the International Conference on Freshwater [Dec 2001
By Margot B [Feb 2002
mailto:margotb@wonderport.com
http://www.writers.OrgHQ.com
This article courtesy of http://www.air-chiller.com.
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