Providing the World with Drinking Water in the 21st Century Essay

Seventy one percent of our planet is covered by water, so it would seem that we could never run out of drinking water. But of that seventy one percent, ninety seven percent is salt water – extremely expensive to convert into drinking water. The other three percent is fresh water, which is contained in: glaciers, polar caps, lakes, rivers, and ground water. Out of this three percent, only one percent is

Water may be a renewable resource, but the world’s supply of drinkable fresh water is being consumed more rapidly than ever before, and most importantly, more rapidly than it can be replenished. Only 2.5% of water on Earth is fresh

Clean water is essential to our basic needs as human beings and has been acknowledged as a basic human right according to the UN as of July 28, 2010. Still, 1 in 9 (782 million) people don’t have access to clean water, 1 in 3 (2.5 billion) don’t have access to adequate sanitation which results in the spread of often fatal and preventable disease. In a world where 2 in 5 people own a smartphone, it’s easy to forget that for some people even the most basic necessities are hard to come by. Approximately 3.5 million people die every year due to inadequate water supplies. Access to sanitation and safe drinking water could save the lives of 1.5 million children each year.

There is a water crisis which faces many parts of the world and it is a threat to survival of human beings since humans are primarily dependent on water. Shortage in drinking water is beginning to show its effects in first world countries, but is a current major problem facing lesser developed countries which have not taken drastic steps to harvest water and purify it to make it safe for human consumption. In developed countries the population growth has strained available water resources and stretched the ability of governments and private firms to provide safe drinking water to the vast majority of the population. Seventy one percent of

Water, like food, is a necessity for human life that is used for many purposes such as agricultural, industrial, and domestic systems. While water is a common element around the world not all of it is clean and able to be consumed or used by humans. With only a percentage of the world’s water being clean and the use of water increasing, the availability of water around the world has become a common issue in the developing and even the developed world. This may be a smaller problem in areas close to clean water sources compared to areas far from a clean water source but, the availability of water is not strictly based on location, it also depends on the specific political and social needs and issues of the area as well. These all become issues that must be accounted for when deciphering whether water is a basic human right or a commodity and what action must be taken to aid the developing water systems in community’s that lack them.

Today, desalination is a common process that's used in seaside cities and towns worldwide. There are more than 15,000 desalination plants around the world providing freshwater from salt and brackish water alike (Planet Green 2011). This number continues to grow as researchers work to improve the process, both in terms of cost effectiveness and energy efficiency (DSE 2011). But countries such as Australia, Israel and even the United States are continually adding desalination plants of various sorts into their water-management portfolios. The facilities are common in North Africa and the Mideast, where freshwater is scarce (Chandler 2008).

-Article 1- Ghaffour, N., M. Missimer, T., & L. Amy, G. (2013). Desalination (Technical review and evaluation of the economics of water desalination: Current and future challenges for better water supply sustainability) (Vol. 309, pp. 197-207). Thuwal.

1. There are two main sources of fresh drinking water, ground water and surface water. Ground water originates from precipitations that usually fall in the form of snow or rain. While, the surface water is also originates from precipitate that reaches the land surface and is then recharged into rivers, wetlands and lakes. Although these systems are usually reliable, in desperate time of need, a more reliable source of water is needed. The desalination plant is extremely valuable and flexible because it does not depend on rainfall. Instead, the desalination plant is the only source that relies on seawater. Using seawater in the desalination plant helps meet the community’s water needs and secures the water needs in the future. While other sources of water, such as rainwater or water from dames are not reliable enough to strictly rely

Over 2.3 billion more people have gained access to an improved source of drinking water since 1990, but 748 million people still draw their water from an unimproved source

In the many death cases that have been researched, most of the accidents that occurred in these rural areas has some type of relations to water. Inadequate water can lead to illnesses, diseases, and sometimes death. Along with the exponential population growth in West Africa, this epidemic is becoming more of a harsh reality every single day. With 94% of the 1.4 million deaths every year due to Diarrhea, a search for a better cost-effective and sanitary water treatment is an emergency that needs to be taken care of

There are over one million drinking water pipes laid throughout the US. These pipes last around 75 to 100m years, and most were put in, in the twentieth century. On average, Americans use up 42 billion gallons of water everyday. 80 percent of the water that is used comes from sources that are above the ground, while the rest comes from underground. According to the American Water Works Association, “an estimated $1 trillion is necessary to maintain and expand service to meet demands over the next 25 years.” This is not only a big wake up call, but it could end up being a crisis.

Desalination provides accessible drinking water, desalination plants can provide drinking water in areas were there is no fresh water. Some Caribbean islands get almost all of their drinking water through desalination plants, and Saudi Arabia gets 70 percent of its fresh water via desalination. This method is actually very helpful as this process goes through a lot of stages and purifies the water. It is very helpful as it purifies the salt water through each evaporation chamber. It distributes the amount of work for all the chambers which allows the chambers to last long and work properly. Water goes through the four stages, and each chamber does it’s job and freshwater is product eventually. Another advantage of desalination plants are that they reduce pressure of freshwater supplies that comes from areas that need protecting. By treating ocean water rather than removing water from sources is also very helpful as that preserves the natural water bodies. However there are also some disadvantages, as it is very costly to build this kind of plants. Depending on the location, building these plants can cost $2.9 million to $300 million. Even after building the plants, once they are operational, they require a lot of energy in order for the plants to be efficient. Whereas that energy costs almost ⅓ or ½ of the total cost of producing freshwater. Therefore not all countries in this world will be able to afford or product desalination plants. Another disadvantage are the environmental impacts the desalination plants make. Removing the salt removed from the water is a big issue. The discharge which is also known as brine, lowers the amount of oxygen in the water at the disposal site, which leads to the killing of animals that are not used to the higher levels of salt. In addition, the desalination process uses numerous chemicals including chlorine, carbon dioxide,

The last resort to fixing the water crisis is desalination. “For agriculture, desalination is so far out of the range of cost that no one really even thinks about it. But over time, we will see more and more desalination in those places with no other options, as we see in many Middle East and Gulf state countries," (Gleick, 2015). Desalination is a process that removes salt and minerals from saline water. The most popular methods used in desalination are multi-stage flash distillation, which uses heat to evaporate water, leaving the salt behind, and which accounted for 84% of desalination in 2004; and reverse osmosis desalination, which is less energy intensive but still requires a great deal of energy to pump water through filtration membranes. Forward

As the worlds population grows, it is forced by circumstances that it has created to face the limitations of the worlds resources. Most people in the US have always been fortunate enough to have enough of whatever they wanted. When something they like breaks or wears out, they throw it away or buy a new one, and they often don’t even make an attempt to repair an item. They neglect basic maintenance until they damage their belongings beyond repair, and expect that they’ll always have enough. But some things are beyond their control, beyond there power or financial ability to replace or repair. The world’s drinking water supply is one of these without concern, without attention, without preventative maintenance and reclamation and

Access to clean water is a basic human right and yet people around the world don’t have that right and they struggle to survive without it. The many uses of clean and potable water include water for drinking to cooking other daily purpose. It is reported that over 1.1 billion people lack access to an improved water resource and three million individuals, and majority of them children, suffer and die from water-related disease. The need to improve water quality and providing clean water should be major project for developed countries like the US and so called “well developed countries”.