Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Water suffers changes into as many natures as are the different places
through which it passes.
Water, as with the mirror that changes with the color of its object, so
it alters with the nature of the place, becoming: noisome, laxative,
astringent, sulfurous, salt, incarnadined, mournful, raging, angry,
red, yellow, green, black, blue, greasy, fat or slim.
Water sometimes starts a conflagration, sometimes it extinguishes one.
Water is warm and is cold.
Water carries away or sets down.
Water hollows out or builds up.
Water tears down or establishes.
Water empties or fills.
Water raises itself or burrows down.
Water spreads or is still.
Water is the cause at times of life or death, or increase of privation,
nourishes at times and at others does the contrary.
Water, at times has a tang, at times it is without savor.
Water sometimes submerges the valleys with great flood.
In time and with water, everything changes.
We can sum up water's contradictions by simply stating that, although
the globe is awash in it, water is no single thing but an elemental force that
shapes our existence. Da Vinci's last observation, “In time and with water,
everything changes,” concerns us most in this text.
Why? Another good question.
We stated in the preface that next to the air we breathe, the water we drink
is most important to us—to all of us. Water is no less important than air,
simply less urgent. For all of us, although we treat it casually, unthinkingly,
water is not a novelty, but a necessity—we simply cannot live without water.
Some might view our statements about the vital importance of water (com-
monly incorrectly viewed as a rather plain and simple substance) as nothing
more than hyperbole, exaggeration, panic, or overstatement. But are they?
Is our concern over safe drinking water really an exaggeration? We think
not, because we absolutely know and understand this simple point: We were
born of water and to live we must be sustained by it.
Development of safe drinking water supplies is a major concern today.
This may seem strange to the average person (depending, of course, on
where this individual resides), some of whom might literally be surrounded
by various bodies of water. (We are literally surrounded by water, aren't we?)
Drinking water practitioners—those responsible for finding a source, certi-
fying its safety, and providing it to the consumer—know better. The drink-
ing water practitioner knows, for example, that two key concerns drive the
