Water Crisis.

[Samyuktha PC]

~Water~

It is our right to use, duty to conserve and crime to exploit.

In 1995, the vice-president of the World Bank, Ismail Serageldin predicted an acute water shortage for the new millennium: "If the wars of this century were fought for oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water."
Water is the essence of life. It is perhaps the most basic resource: it is essential for our survival, crucial for relieving poverty, hunger, disease and critical for economic use. Water is also essential for growing food, as well as for a variety of social and cultural reasons. Water is a basic human right, but unfortunately its use is confined to a few and these few are fast depleting this resource.

Where is all this water?
'All water flows into the oceans or the purse of the rich.'
71% of the Earth's surface is water. Of this, 97% is in the oceans and only the remaining 3% is available in rivers, lakes and reservoirs as fresh water. There are three sources of water: rain water, ground water and surface water. Today, all these three resources have been almost depleted. The earth is a closed system and neither gains nor loses much water. This means that the same amount of water that existed on earth a million years ago is still here. Water continuously changes from one state to another and moves from place to place forming the hydrological cycle. The water cycle is the process by which water circulates from the land or the oceans to the atmosphere and back again. What is affected is the availability of usable water where and when needed.

Since water plays a very vital role in sustaining life on Earth, water must be accessible and safe. Lack of safe water is a cause of serious illnesses. Tuberculosis, cholera, diarrhea, typhoid and malaria are the main water borne diseases, which kill over two million people every year, the vast majority being children mostly in developing countries. The world's total population is six billion. One in six people in the world do not have access to safe drinking water.

What is the problem?
During the past century, the World population has tripled, and water use has increased six-fold. These changes have come at great environmental cost: half the wetlands have disappeared during the twentieth century; some rivers don't reach the sea and twenty percent of the freshwater fish are endangered.
These environmental consequences also entail social and economic costs. While agriculture uses more and more water every year, to meet the food demands of a growing population, other users are competing for the same water: more people means more energy required and more hydropower. Especially in the western world, industrialization has had serious and often negative effects n water quality; currently global markets move the most polluting industries to the developing countries, usually near cities where population growth and illegal settlements already put a lot of pressure on water resources.
In 2020, 60% of the World's population will be urban, a concentration that makes urban water infrastructure development an extremely urgent issue. These are but one of the factors influencing the world's water resources, complicated by the fact that they are interlinked, and can't be approached separately.
The projections are grim: around the world over the next twenty years, the average supply of water per person is expected to drop by a third and it already is in short supply. The United States projects that by the middle of the next century, at least two billion people in sixty countries- depending on factors such as population growth and climate change – will be seriously short of water. In the meantime, the water quality will worsen due to pollution and rising temperatures.
Growing populations, wastage of water, inefficient irrigation and pollution exert pressure on this resource. Pollution and wastage are the primary threats to this resource, both of which we as human beings are responsible for.

What is water pollution?

Water pollution is the contamination of water by foreign matter such as microorganisms, chemicals, industrial and sewage, as well as other wastes. Such matter deteriorates the quality of the water and renders it unfit for consumption.

The major pollutants of water are:

1. Sewage and other oxygen-demanding wastes;

2. Infectious agents- plant nutrients that can stimulate the growth of aquatic plants, which then interfere with water uses and when decaying, deplete the dissolved oxygen and produce disagreeable odours;

3. Exotic organic chemicals, including pesticides, various industrial products, surface-active substances in detergents, and decomposition products of other organic compounds;

4. Petroleum, especially from oil spills;

5. Inorganic minerals and chemical compounds;

6. Sediments consisting of soil and mineral particles washed by storms and flood water from crop lands, unprotected soils, strip mines, roads, and bulldozed urban areas.

7. Radioactive substances from the waste of uranium and thorium mining and refining from nuclear power plants, and from the industrial, medical and scientific use of radioactive materials.

Heat may also be considered as a pollutant, when increased temperatures in bodies of water result from the discharge of cooling water by factories and power plants.

There are so many facts, but doesn't it affect us in someway? We maybe living in these posh flats, which get water from outside, which is very clean. What about the others who receive the water that we have mentioned above, with all those pollutants? We definitely contribute a lot to that pollution.

What does one mean by water wastage?
We all know how we are suffering because of the shortage of water. How did we get to this state? There was a time when people did not care because there was enough and more water flowing from taps, in the wells and most of them could access it from the fresh water bodies itself. The term " natural resource" has undergone expansion in meaning as a result of a greater understanding of the relationship of human beings with the world they inhabit. Early in the twentieth century natural resources were viewed primarily as sources of useful commodities, I think we are no better of now. Most of us don't even know where we get the water we use from. Shouldn't we learn until we see it face to face?

'A coconut shell full of water is a sea to an ant.' Even the sea is a coconut shell of water for us. This is how we have used water all these years. Do we need to continue to do it? Now that we have realized don't we need to act before any more damage happens? We need to understand that every extra drop of water we use depletes the future generation of a drop of water. What will happen to the generations coming?


What is the situation in Chennai? As the citizens of Chennai have been witnessing over the past few years, the city is still in the grip of an acute water shortage. Two of the rain-fed lakes that meet the city's needs- Poondi and Red hills- have severely depleted storage owing to the failure of the southwest monsoon and the northeast monsoon last year and a third, sholavaram, is dry. Tanker trucks pressed into service by the Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (CMWSSB) and those run by private operators are trying to meet the people's daily needs, at least partially. The people of chennai get 35 liters of water per capita in the best of times. The poor, the majority of them living in slums, are the worst- affected. They depend entirely on the water supply systems.

Groundwater is the city's major water source now; It is drawn mainly from the well-fields in the Araniyar- Kortakaiyar basin and the aquifer between tiruvanmiyur and Muttukadu along the coast of south Chennai. Groundwater extraction is reaching its limits. According to the Central Groundwater Board, 80% of Chennai's groundwater has been depleted and any further exploration could lead to salt water ingression. The assured yield from groundwater sources is estimated at 190 million liters per day (mld); of this, 158 mld has been tapped already.

What is conservation?
While talking about water, rational use and effient supply have to be taken into account. Water, other than currency is also a form of wealth, which is getting concentrated in very few hands. Rational use and efficient supply are linked by conservation. This is the only way out.

Conservation is a suitable use of natural resources such as soils, water, plants, animals and minerals. Conservation of water includes replenishing the sources by letting water percolate (which has become impossible by these concrete jungles) and suitable use and equity in supply.