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"Houston. We have a problem"
June 17, 2003
By Peter Meingast
First the facts ma’am: just the facts.
- The human body is mostly water.
- Humans cannot live without water.
- Lake Chad - in 1962 this was the
fourth largest lake in Africa. It has shrunk 95%. 20 million people
rely on its water.
- Colorado River- is a mere trickle when it reaches
the Morelos Dam at the US Mexican Border. 25 million people rely
on its water – Seven US states and Mexico
use every drop of its water.
- Yellow River, China - has run out before
it has reached its mouth in 10 of the last 12 years.
- Tigris & Euphrates - claiming prehistoric water rights Syria & Iraq
threatened to blow up Turkish dams. Turkey claims sovereignty over
the headwaters.
- Murray Darling Watershed –covering 1/7th of Australia produces
almost ½ of Australian agricultural income. Watershed Basin
desalinization costs $170 million US yearly in treatment and lost productivity,
and
is Australia’s most important environmental
issue.
- Parana River – or canal? A disaster in the making, the
Hydrovia Project is to straighten the river to enable shipping to go
further inland:
or will it simply drain the basin?
- Vistula River – Is used for
drinking water by the towns and cities it passes despite heavy pollution.
- US
utilities will spend $1.5 Billion annually for 20 years to remove
groundwater contamination (bacteria to Atrazine and MBTE).
- Santa Monica,
California has closed ½ of its wells due to
MBTE levels being excessive.
- Mexico City has pumped out so much of its
groundwater that sections of the city are starting to sink.
- The Ogallala
Aquifer of the Great Plains has dropped by 60 or more feet.
- A resident
of the Kiberia Slum in Nairobi, Kenya pays four times as much for
water than a North American.
- One flush of a toilet in North America
uses as much water as is used in a day by people of the 30 poorest
countries.
- From the time you started to read this until now 12 children
have died (one child dies every 15 seconds):
- Because they did not
have enough clean water or sanitation.
- Today 9,300 people will have
died from diarrhoea, cholera, schistosimiasis and other diseases from
contaminated water or insufficient water for
hygiene.
- 3.4 million people will have thus died this year.
The issue: is pollution, demand and overbuilding. The
hope is that:
Rivers: Renew themselves every 20 days or so. Political
will would/could/can start to turn the situation around.
Aquifers: They supply drinking water for ½ the
USA. They supply drinking water for 1/3rd of the world. They take many
hundreds of years to renew themselves, perhaps thousands.
Source: National Geographic
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