I often hear people and public service announcements admonishing us to not “waste water”, with suggestions about five minute showers, low flow shower heads, fancy Euro-style toilets, turning off the tap when you brush your teeth etc. I can understand this if you live in certain areas such as Reno or Vegas. But what if you live next to a big honking body of water like the Great Lakes or the Atlantic Ocean. I have lived near both and I currently live in Halifax which has the ocean, lots of lakes, and more than enough precipation (the only time it doesn’t seem to be constantly raining, freezing raining, or snowing, is in the fall) and I still hear this sort of stuff.
As I understand it, if I take a 25 minute shower instead of a five minute shower, 20 more minutes worth of water will go down the drain, into our filtration system (which just “crapped out” (pun intended) a few weeks ago) into the harbour, at which point some of it will evaporate, fall as rain, go into the harbour etc. Is water actually being wasted or is energy, for pumping, filtering and other related activities, the thing that is being wasted?
I’m as green as the next person, having bussed, biked or walked to work for the last 20 years of my working life, but is this water-wastage thing actually accurate or relevant?
Consider the effort required to acquire, store, filter, purify, and transport 1l of water. Then multiply that by the millions of liters used per day. The less used, the less effort and cost associated with water to the city. For Halifax, while you’re sitting right next to a damn big ocean, none of that water is available for domestic use since it’s salty. You’d have to desalinate the stuff which in turn costs money based on amount. So you probably pull water from rivers, lakes and aquifers - but those can only provide so much at a time. If demand continues to increase you’ll have to find more which requires more capital outlay to build plants and pipes, train the people and treat the expanded waste water volume.
For other areas with less available water while it is a cost question, it’s also a resource management problem. You can spend all you want but if the only aquifer available to you is “empty” you’re done.
Wisconsin has water problems. We have water all around. The aquifers don’t replenish at the rate it’s pumped out. One large section even poisons the water as the rock is exposed to air instead of water as the levels drops further every year. Some towns on that aquifer have looked at piping water a long distance from Lake Michigan to supply their water.The Lakes around Madison used to have spring water feed them. Now the draw down of the water by pumping sucks water through the lake beds into the aquifer reversing the process.
It’s not a simple thing like what you gave as reasons. The whole aquifer and natural cleansing cycle gets messed up once you draw water faster than the aquifer replenishes. The level of lakes and water for plants is affected too.
From what I understand, places like the Great Lakes are some of the relatively few areas that aren’t in real danger of water shortages in the near future. Plenty of precipitation, huge freshwater reservoirs, and lots of fairly efficient recycling. Waste water from one town is cleaned up, and flows down river to the next down to be used again.
But many parts of the world are literally sucking aquifers dry, removing water far faster than it’s replaced by precipitation. This isn’t just in the deserts, but major agricultural regions like the Great Plains in the US. Here’s one example of such an aquifer that’s drying out.
With regard to the Great Lakes…at first glance, it may seem like they could supply a large area with fresh water. However, the watershed area which feeds it is mostly in Canada, and if you want to replenish what you take thru groundwater, you will have to be in the watershed area.
The current ecological thought is to take only what you can put back, or put it back where you got it. Here’s an example of what problems you run into. The eastern portion of Wisconsin, which abuts Lake Michigan, isn’t in the Lake Michigan watershed except for a slim portion very close to the lake. Much of Milwaukee drains the other way, west, into the Mississippi valley. So, due to the Great Lakes Compact, much of Milwaukee can’t use Lake Michigan water.
However, I take exception to the “conserve water” public service announcements. My water comes from a 300 ft deep well about 200 ft away from Lake Michigan. It is a private well and only I bear the cost of using it, not a municipality. It makes no sense for me to conserve when the entire lake is in front of (and under) my house. Low-flow faucets? Nonsense. Everything I use gets recycled back into the same ground from whence it came.
There is definitely a greater responsibility to limit water use in a place like Phoenix Arizona than there is in Madison Wisconsin. I don’t really worry about watering my garden here, but would if I lived in a desert or the city had a severe strain on the water supply.
Are you saying that your drains go back into the aquifer from which you get your well water?
Recharge is another part of this equation. Many aquifers do not recharge or, as Harmonious mentions, recharge very slowly. Aquifers which are ‘trapped’ water will never recharge. Once you pump out all the water it will be gone.
You may not be ‘wasting’ water since you’re not destroying it, but you are putting a dent in the amount of usable water; it will be turned back into usable water eventually, but possibly not in your lifetime.
Sure, if you’re willing to pay for it.
That’s what I tend to get out of the “wasting water” bit. If you want to waste water go ahead, but in the end, it’s just going to raise the cost of your water in the future as it does take time to purify, desalinate, detoxify, whatever needs to be done. And either we’ll come up with faster (and more expensive ways to do so), or we’ll have the same ways but with less in reserve (thus costing us more for the water that we DO currently have).
Sure, but they use a lot of energy. It may be the case that the fix for some water issues is to build nuclear plants dedicated to powering the desalination machines.
An Israeli friend told me that they had looked into building massive towers to evaporate sea water and produce rain clouds. Probably after initial construction costs, this would involve zero (man applied) energy.
I’ve also heard of a cliff face on Tenerife where they hung out large rope nets which caught spray from waves, evaporated and reformed as liquid water, creating a verdant area.
Desalination might not need to be energy intensive.
Define “waste”. Everything we use is “wasted” in one way or another.
Everything you consume raises demand and increases the market price. Water, electricity, condoms, apples, real estate, everything. That’s the best way to match demand and supply. There is nothing wrong with that.
If you are willing to pay the price of the product then it is yours to do as you please and nobody else is to say of it is wasted or not. You paid the price so for you it was worth it and that is all that counts.
Why do some people want to make us believe some uses for water are better than others? Water should be used for whatever we want to use it. If I like taking long showers why should anybody have anything to say as long as I pay the bill? If the price of water is too low and demand exceeds supply so that rationing has to be introduced and certain uses of water restricted or prohibited I think that is wrong.
If I buy 150 bottles of expensive French Champaign so I can bathe in it, some people might think it is a waste but it is my champaign to do as I please with it. Water should be no different. Let the market dictate what it will be used for.
Keeping the price of water artificially low will only mean shortages and rationing by other means are inevitable. The best all-around way of decreasing water consumption is raising the price of water. Raise the price and people start to conserve. That is not a bad thing. It is a good thing.
Yes, eventually. That’s true of every rural private water system; a well over there and a septic over there. They may be separated more by time than distance.
The time it takes (after being processed, of course) depends on the geology. In my local case, geologists say that due to the karst underground, surface water reaches deep wells within a few years, much faster than other places. So, since I plan to live more than a few years, yes, it will return to the aquifer from whence it came.
And if I should draw down the water table, the nearby lake will fill it quickly thru the sand and karst subsurface. If you doubt that, try digging a moat for a sand castle on the beach sometime.
Seriously, all of the city of Milwaukee is in the Lake Michigan drainage basin, and only less than 1/2 of 1% of Milwaukee County (the southwest corner) drains into the Mississippi watershed.
I will concede that a significant chunk of population of the suburbs west of Milwaukee (the majority of those western 'burbs, actually) also drain into the Mississippi.
And on my farm on the shore of Lake Michigan, we still have artesian springs that run year-round. So it’s hard to get excited about turning off the tap when brushing my teeth.
Unless, as I mentioned, you are dealing with an aquifer which doesn’t recharge ever.
That’s what I was wondering. I am aware that such areas exist, just curious if that was what you really meant.
I don’t doubt it for a minute. It’s just that not everyone lives in an area with that kind of soil conditions. Areas with heavy, clayey soils will not see the recharge rate that you do. Areas using water from a ‘trapped’ aquifer will never recharge theirs (without some kind of injection system). So, while it’s true for you it’s not true for everybody.
