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Introduction
Ironically, water is considered as one of the most abundant compounds in the world as more than 70% of the earth’s surface is covered with water. However, abundant as the world’s water supply may seem, 96.5% of it is found in oceans; obviously salinized while the remaining volume of freshwater is somehow trapped beneath the earth’s surface, icecaps, and icebergs or would have to be pumped from rivers and lakes. If only this water supply can be tapped and directly utilized, water would not be commoditized as it is today. The NAE Grand Challenge is an organization run by engineers who aim at restoring human needs by focusing of four major realms of the human being concern. Central to their concerns is the quantity and quality of water, of which is short in supply in most parts of the world. Water must be available in plenty in order to serve both personal use including drinking, waste removal, washing and cooking and for large-scale use including irrigation. Maintaining the water balance means being able to maintain and sustain life. Driven by the need to maintain life, the engineering organization aims at employing new technologies that help solve scarcity of water in the world while improving its quality.
Clean Water Scarcity
The difficulty of obtaining fresh water from the natural environment plus the process of making it pass the quality for its intended usage is what makes water one of the most commoditized necessities. In the light of this argument, water can easily be compared with man’s equally important commodities such as electricity and gas. Just like electricity and gas, water needs infrastructures to support its extraction, processing, delivery and distribution. All these processes entail costs and are governed by political, economic, social and technological forces. As societies improve, so is their water consumption increases. Obviously, water demand will increase in direct relationship with the growth of the population and industries in an area. Water demand varies depending on its consumers. For residential consumers, potable water does not necessarily have to be on a different pipe and so the water that comes out of the faucet is not only used for drinking but also used for all domestic purposes such as bathing and washing. A typical family, for example, consumes around 80,000 gallons of water every year or about 7,000 gallons per month. On the other hand, industrial and commercial sectors may demand higher quantities. Aside from an ever-increasing demand, water scarcity can also be attributed to improper use of water resources and the destruction of water reserves due to human activities that contaminate the natural sources of clean water. In the United States, for example, mountain top mining activities have been criticized for its adverse impact to the head waters of the Appalachian mountain. Considered as one of the most bio diverse regions of the western hemisphere, the Appalachian mountain is home to some of the world’s endangered species and also home to 25.2 million Americans . Researchers believe that the ongoing coal mining activity in this region will pose health hazards due to water contamination. As observed by Holzman, runoffs due to precipitation would carry not only organic materials downstream but also heavy metallic elements such as “arsenic, lead, manganese, iron, sodium, strontium, and sulfate”. Ground water contamination is also another factor why clean water is scarce despite its abundance. According to historians, during the 1700’s residents of Manhattan get their water by digging shallow wells for domestic use. However, as the city’s residents increase in numbers, private wells became inadequate to support demand especially in industrial and commercial establishments. Attempts were made to increase the city’s water supply and plans for building Roman style aqueducts were discussed in the city’s council. For a period, New York City got its water from underground reserves that eventually got contaminated as the city’s population grew. The danger of using New York’s ground water for domestic use became apparent when the city was struck with a yellow fever epidemic in 1795. Fossil fuel exploration and extraction also increases the possibility of contamination of ground water resources such as underground aquifers and the ground water table. Hydraulic fracturing, a modern way of extracting natural gas and oil underground, uses harmful chemicals for drilling purposes that could end up contaminating ground water resources. Water contamination, on the other hand, is an irreversible process, which accounts for the growing scarcity of clean water in its natural environment.
Resolution and Mitigation Proposal
The best way to resolve the problem regarding the scarcity of clean water is to prevent natural reservoirs from being contaminated. In this regards, stricter environmental protection laws must be employed to prevent human activities from placing these water resources at risk of being contaminated. One of the most notable legislation regarding water protection in the U.S. is the Clean Water Act (CWA) of 1972. Under this act, industrial companies are required to present a plan on how to mitigate the impact of their operation to prevent the degradation of the water system. However, the real challenge is not on the existence of environmental protection laws but rather, it is on the implementation of these laws. It is, therefore, recommended that an the implementation of environmental acts must be heightened and should ensure that strict compliance to the rules are followed. In order to increase the supply of fresh water, engineering methods are being employed. Typical examples of these methods are creation of infrastructures that aims to retain and distribute clean water such as dams and reservoir systems. One particular example of a clean water reservoir is the New York water supply system. The City of New York and its surrounding area takes its clean water supply by impounding its rivers upstream. New York’s Catskill and Delaware watershed is considered as the largest unfiltered drinking water system in the United States. The impounding of rivers upstream to create reservoirs proved to be an efficient means of supplying water for New Yorkers. Accordingly, 95% of city’s water supply is distributed by utilizing the force of gravity as headwater comes rushing down the pipes into the city’s population and only 5% is being pumped to maintain its pressure head especially when drought conditions exist. However, maintain this massive infrastructure also comes with a cost. Although it is quite difficult to estimate, the costs of maintaining the water quality of New York’s watersheds is at around $100 million dollars annually. These maintenance programs includes “outreach and education, land management, land acquisition, and partnerships with watershed non-profits and municipalities”. Aside from that, the city would have to allocate some of its income to develop and maintain its infrastructures. Even so, the cost of taking preventive measures to maintain the quality of an area’s drinking water without filtration systems is lesser compared to constructing and maintaining a water filtration plant that could accommodate the same volume as the reservoirs currently supplies. As observed by Mass, “the construction cost for a filtration plant large enough to support the Catskill/Delaware system is estimated to be $6 - $10 billion dollars, with an additional $110 million annually in operation and maintenance”. Apparently, once the water resource has been contaminated, the only way to mitigate its impact is to install filtration system so it can be used for consumption. Another solution to the problem of clean water scarcity is the processing of salt water in oceans and seas. Currently, researches are being made to improve the technology related to the desalination of salt water, which according to proponents could resolve the world’s water problem.
Works Cited
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Holzman, D. Mountaintop Removal Mining: Digging Into Community Health Concerns. November 2011. September 2014 <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3226519/>.
Mass, E. Watershed Protection & New York City's Water Supply. February 2007. September 2014 <http://www.pwconserve.org/issues/watersheds/newyorkcity/>.
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