I’ve often heard this stated by environmentalist groups. I can’t understand the logic behind it. It’s my understanding that water levels more or less stay the same, due to the water cycle, so why bother saving water if we aren’t in drought? Is it to save energy, somehow (if that’s the case, why not just say so)?
It seems logical to me that if we don’t use as much water then water treatment plants will not be as “busy” and will use less energy. Also less energy would be required to pump the clean water back to the houses. Just a WAG.
Heavy water use during a dry season requires building and maintaining reservoirs to store water; this, in turn, requires building more damns, rerouting rivers, et cetera. Combined with diverting or using water upstream in order to supply demand (i.e. the Colorado river usage by Arizona and Southern California resulting in it being reduced to a fraction of its natural flow by the time it hits the Rio Grande) and there is a significant environmental impact above and beyond water treatment costs.
In modern days (in the US at least), we don’t think about this, because those who came before plundered and built the infrastructure to essentially provide all the water we need to keep our golf courses green even in Phoenix in the middle of summer where nothing natural is supposed to survive outside. Tap water is so cheap it is practically free, thanks to heavy government subsidation, and so we think very little of pissing it away. In reality we are putting a significant strain on our natural resources that, in days past, would have been readily apparent. Another example of the tragedy of the commons.
Thank you, William Mulholland, for bringing the water empires of Han Dynasty-era Cathay to 20th Century American Southwest.
It’s Chinatown, Jake. Forget about it.
Stranger
It seems to me that water levels are not more or less staying the same. Water tables in many US locations are falling and deeper wells are needed to reach water than was the case 50 or 60 years ago.
The problem is the rate of water usage. The cycle of our dirtying the water and then having if filtered by evaporation and raining back down or by the ground seepage into aquifers produces just so much fresh water/year. When our use of fresh water in a year exceeds this replenishment rate the water table in aquifers falls.
Does the UK use wells? I live in quite a hilly area, so there’s about ten huge reservoirs in my immediate vicinity. I’m not so sure about the rest of the country, though.
Well, I play golf occasionaly with a guy who had a well drilling business in England so I suppose wells are used. Of course he left there to come here so maybe they quit drilling wells. Somehow I doubt that they did, though.
Nitpick: The Colorado goes nowhere near the Rio Grande, it empties directly into the Pacific Ocean (Gulf of California, to be precise.) You are right that barely a trickle actually reaches the ocean, though.
Also note that some aquifers do not recharge. They are pockets of water trapped underground; there is no seepage to replenish them. When it’s gone, it’s gone.
You think the war over oil is bad? Wait 'til you see the war over water.
Yeah, my area gets its water from an aquifer, and it gets lower and lower every year. The recharge via percolation through the basalt bedrock is orders of magnitude slower than the rate the water level is being drawn down. People keep drilling their wells deeper and deeper, but the cones of depletion are starting to overlap.
[nitpick] cone of depression. [/nitpick]
Good point, however, Elvez.
Before we have a war, we should probably first try the idea of charging people based on what they use. In a great many places, it’s either “free” (in the sense that it’s paid for indirectly) or the charges are largely independent of the amount used.
When wasting water costs nothing and conserving it offers no tangible benefit, it’s not too surpring to see a lot of wastage.
One thing that many here seem to be forgetting is that for many people, especially people on the east coast, the water is renewable. It is not drawn from a well, or from a reservoir, it is drawn from flowing rivers.
For example, my hometown of Orangeburg, SC uses water drawn from the Edisto River. It is the only city that does so and the river has 20 times the amount of water that the city could use.
In this sense, water conservation is useless. Water that you don’t use just flows on by. It will always be there because rain will always fall.
However, in order for that water to flow through your taps, it first has to go through a treatment plant. It costs the community money to treat the water, and then, when you’re done with it, the waste water also has to be treated before it can be dumped back into the river.
Water is one thing. Potable water is quite another.
Yeah, we have much the same situation here- creek-fed lakes provide most of the D/FW water supplies.
At any rate, I think that the question in the OP about showering vs. bathing makes sense if you’re using a low-flow shower head (2 GPM).
At that flow rate, a 10 minute shower uses 20 gallons of water. I’m guessing that filling up a bathtub takes considerably more than that- probably 30-35, unless you’re Jabba the Hutt and displace a really huge amount of water.
http://www.us.kohler.com/onlinecatalog/pdf/087751_4.pdf
is a spec sheet for a cheapo Kohler tub- it holds 45 gallons to overflow.
From everything I’ve read, industrial and agricultural uses dwarf home use of water so any consumer focused conservation effort isn’t going to have much impact. Of course, we can’t simply raise water rates for agriculture because then the farm lobby would complain to congress.
Well, here in Knoxville, we live in a temperate rainforest, so we’re not too worried yet. It would have to get pretty dry to dry up to any appreciable degree here. But there is some reason to cut back, at least out west.
Hmmm… I’d never thought of this before. How does the agricultural user receive his water assuming he doesn’t have his own well? I was going to snigger and say, “hey, famers only have to pay for their well pumps!” but there is a lot of water drawn from non-private sources for irrigation. Please tell me that this isn’t flourinated, chlorinated water, right? It’s something that’s drawn raw from the source?
In any case, I live (normally) in water wonderland – conserving domestic water itself is a silly notion best left for environmental wackos (and I used that in the GQ sense, they’re wackos if they think we need to conserve water in Michigan). What we do have to protect, though, is the poor physical distribution infrastructure. We have odd-even lawn watering days some years because the peak demand for water exceeds the system capacity to preserve it. But this isn’t a water problem, as I said.
Interestingly, we pay actual costs for our water. The City of Detroit Water Department is in its own scandalous situation (everything about Detroit proper is, in fact), but they’re the monopoly provider for virtually everyone – yet everything indicates that all of the funding is from users and there are no appropriated funds.
Farmers here (Texas Panhandle) have irrigation wells drilled on their land. They own the water rights to the water under their land. Their main cost is for fuel (usually natural gas) to pump the water to the surface. Now we have to contend with T. Boone Pickens. He has bought the water rights from many area land owners and intends to sell the water to cities downstate. This is a semi-arid region, the main reservoir for the area is already about 60ft below full, some area lakes are totally dry, and this idiot wants to sell the groundwater. The farmers at least have mostly switched to center pivot drip irrigation as opposed to running ditch irrigation. Pickens wants to sell all he can pump.
In regard to the OP, actually, showers do use less water. If you have a tub, try plugging the tub and taking your normal shower. Tub will not be full.
I realise that, but I wanted to know why we should even bother saving water in the first place. From what I understand, virtually all of the water used in my home comes from reservoirs in the Pennines above my house, so I couldn’t see the logic in limiting water usage.