Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Kingdom, 45 percent in Australia, 50 percent in South Africa, and 58
percent in Canada.
3
The water problems foreseen decades ago by hydrologists threaten
farm productivity, limit population and economic growth, increase busi-
ness expenses, and drive up prices. Nearly every product uses water in
some phase of its production. Reclaimed sewer water is now in wide use
for agricultural and other nondrinking purposes. Desalination plants are
springing up around the country.
About 30 percent of the water American families consume is used
outdoors for watering lawns and gardens, washing cars, maintaining
swimming pools, and cleaning sidewalks and driveways.
4
Clearly,
nearly all these uses are unnecessary. They remain from the days
when the nation had a lower population, fewer houses with large
lawns, fewer cars to wash, and fewer swimming pools, and Americans
were more willing to expend energy by using a broom on driveways
and sidewalks.
The lack of water is imposing limits on how the United States grows.
Freshwater scarcity is a new risk to local economies and regional devel-
opment plans across the country. In 2002, California put into effect a
state law that requires developers to prove that new projects have a plan
for providing water for at least twenty years before local water authori-
ties can approve their projects. Builders in the humid Southeast are facing
limits to planting gardens and lawns for new houses.
The Water Future
According to Peter Gleick in 2008, president of the Pacifi c Institute, a
think-tank specializing in water issues, “The business-as-usual future is
a bad one. We know that in fi ve years we'll be in trouble, but it doesn't
have to be that way. If there were more education and awareness about
water issues, if we started to really think about the natural limits about
where humans and ecosystems have to work together to deal with water,
and if we were to start to think about effi cient use of water, then we
could reduce the severity of the problems enormously. I'm just not sure
we're going to.”
5
It seems that no one has looked at the subject from
the point of view of what is sustainable. There does not seem to be
anyone in state or federal governments thinking about the long-range
big picture that would put the clamps on large-scale development. Politi-
cians rarely want to tell their constituents that they must curb their
insatiable appetites for anything.
