Saving water

Saving water, during a drought and in general

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

“Don't rush to flush if it's only a pee” was the water saving eco-advice given in a booklet produced by the office of the Mayor of London under Ken Livingstone and this is a good advice.

Using less water in our homes (and elsewhere) is not only good environmental practice, it also makes financial sense, especially if you are on a water meter. If you are not than, in financial terms, there is no benefit but in the long run you too will benefit as there remains enough water to go round.

Once again we have seen how our water resources are stretched, especially in the South, South East and East of England where several dry winters in a row have given us another, though by now rather wet, drought and hosepipe bans are in place and the there was the threat, almost, of also other restrictions.

How a country such as Britain where it rains a great deal though, as said, the last couple of winters have been rather dry, bar some snow the year before last and the one before, ends up having water shortages confuses most of our European neighbors. The problem is that unlike most of the Britain does not have a national water grid and makes every excuse under the sun for not putting one in place.

The other problem, especially for the Southern Counties and the Home Counties, is that there are simply too many people living there and too much industry situated there; both of which impacts seriously on the water resources.

Furthermore the water infrastructure is so old, in many places dating from the Victorian era, with little to no investment having been made into it for at least three quarters of a decade. Pipes are so porous that one could almost say that they appear to be resembling a sieve in many places and the water companies seem to be incapable or unwilling to actually get on top of that problem and plug the leaks.

When it comes to saving water, and not only the householders need to think about that; business need to also, there are a number of things that can be done and using the flush on the toilet only when needed is but one.

When it comes to using water a home it is a case “when not necessary don't run the tap” also and that means especially when brushing your teeth. Way too many people – and the reason for this beats me – leave the tap running when cleaning their teeth. Use a beaker as we always did and I still do to rinse. Much better anyway than sticking your head under the tap.

Take a four-minute shower instead of a bath. That saves a great deal of water especially considering how many gallons of pure clean water is being used with each and every bath.

Get a rainwater butt – or more than one – for use in the garden. Rainwater is also much better for use with your plants, be those flowers or vegetables, than is tap water. The chlorine is what cause the problem of leaf burn when watering is done during the day (though watering during the day when the sun is high is not a good idea as the water will evaporate) as chlorine is, basically, a salt.

More water savings could be achieved if you use gray water in the garden, for instance, or for the flushing of your lavatory. Gray water is that kind of water that you have been using for washing your hands, during a shower and such. With the right tools it can be captured and used another time. The only gray water I would not suggest using is the one from washing the dishes as that may, aside from detergent which would not be all that good for watering plants, grease which would cause a problem also when used for flushing the lavatory.

Gray water use requires a little forethought and diverters where certain types of water are used for specific applications, such as the water from your washing machine for use only to flush the lavatory and not to go for watering the garden, for instance.

Those are but a few suggestions that could save you money, if your water use is metered and you pay according to that, and which, and that is most important, can help conserve precious water resources.

© 2012

Get ready for the water wars – and not just in the Southern USA or the dry areas

If the 19th century was about land, 20th century was about oil, the 21st century will be about water

by Michael Smith

There are more of us and if we all drink, wash, flush, generate, irrigate, manufacture, etc., and continue to use and especially abuse and waste water the way we currently do we are going to be in dire straights.

This is not primarily because of droughts in say the Southern USA or in Australia but simply because of the way that we use water and the fact that we flush thousands of gallons of that previous resource down the drain daily, more often than not needlessly. We cannot continue to go on like this; no way.

A decaying highway, plunged deep underwater after Lake Hartwell was dammed in the 1950s, sits exposed once again across what remains of the bay outside Big Water Marina.

This is a depressing reminder of the toll from a stubborn Southern drought that only recently began to abate with replenishing rains this fall. Much of the region has recovered, but a ring stretching from northeast Georgia to the western Carolinas remains stuck in "extreme" drought.

However, it is not just the empty or part empty reservoirs in drought areas that must concern us. We all must think about the way we use water. In addition to that our immense consumption of bottled water, which removes so much of the spring water and other such from the source before it ever even reaches such reservoirs.

It is at times not due to drought that such reservoirs have run dry but because of the water extraction elsewhere for other purposes, and bottles water is one of those that does just that.

Neither is this, necessarily, a result of the so-called “Global Warming” or “Climate Change”, but more often than not bad water management and especially bad water usages and great water wastage.

When the UK had a couple of extremely dry and warm to hot summers and we were put under drought orders in several regions we were also told that it would take years of steady rainfall to refill the reservoirs and especially the aquifers.

Then came the wet summer of 2007 and after just a few days of nigh on continuous and also heavy rain, something that should not have, according to the experts, been filling up the aquifers, we suddenly heard on the news that, unless the rain abated rather soon all the aquifers would be overflowing. But, I thought it would take years of continuous steady rain for them to fill up again and heavy rain in only a few days would not do that. So, at least the experts told us.

Our water usages and the wastage of this precious resource is what is causing most problems. Cars are washed willy-nilly and lawns watered, even during droughts. What for? Toilets are flushed all the time even if it is only for a wee. Each and every time a toilet is being flushed that are about ten liters – 2.5 US gallons – of clean perfectly safe drinking water literally down the tube.

As regards to Hartwell, a massive 56,000-acre lake straddling Georgia-South Carolina state line, is near the epicenter. Even after a spate of recent downpours, its water line is nearly 18 feet below normal levels.

"We never thought we'd see it. We never thought the lake would go this far down," said Jane Davis, who built the marina from the ground up with her husband. "Everyone needs water, but Hartwell has finally given more water than it can take."

Some residents blame the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which sends millions of gallons of water from the lake each week downstream to the Savannah River to help supply Savannah, Augusta and other cities.

They also worry that the Corps and another federal agency, the Southeastern Power Administration, focus too much on generating electricity and too little on keeping the lake full.

"You're going to have to put lake levels on the priority list," said Mike Gray, a real estate broker in nearby Anderson, S.C., who has a growing list of unsold homes on the lake's banks.
The Corps, which has reduced water releases from Hartwell by 15 percent this month, said producing electricity is an "incidental" byproduct of sending water downstream.

Atttitudes like that are really the worrying thing, in my view, when it is more important for those like that real estate broker, that the lake is full so that people can have their big boats on their and go playing rather than whether people have water to drink or electricity.

This is a man-made lake, a reservoir, and it is there to be used for water for drinking, power generating and other uses, but not, primarily, for boating, however nice this may be for the residents around that lake.

Until such a time that the world gets its priorities right, and I mean here the people of the world, we are going to be a deep you know what. Too many with the money – they still have some it seems – are more concerned as to where they can play with their boats and impress their friends with having a boat at a marina, and such. Time for some changes, methinks.

Reservoirs are there to store water for times of needs and not whether some boats can be sailed on there, or whether there is great fishing. That all is secondary and should be thus. Time everyone woke up to this fact, whether at Hartwell or elsewhere.

Water is needed for people, wildlife and nature; the boats are not needed. It is time those that think they can do because they have the money get real. If there is no water to irrigate the fields then they have no food either. But, I guess, they'd simply reckon that they go an buy imported stuff. Brilliant – NOT!

I rest my case.

© M Smith (Veshengro), December 2008
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At least half of all food produced worldwide is wasted

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Huge amounts of food are wasted after production. It is being discarded in processing, destroyed and hence discarded during transport, at supermarkets and in restaurant and domestic kitchens. This wasted food is, obviously, also wasted water as finds a policy brief released on August 22, 2008 at World Water Week in Stockholm.

The brief written and compiled by the Stockholm International Water Institute, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and the International Water Management Institute shows that the current food crisis is less a crisis of production than a crisis of waste. Tossing food away is like leaving the tap running, the authors say.

"More than enough food is produced to feed a healthy global population. Distribution and access to food is a problem - many are hungry, while at the same time many overeat," the brief states. But, it says, "we are providing food to take care of not only our necessary consumption but also our wasteful habits."

What we must not forget also is that there is, I am sure, still the old food mountain and the stupidity, though no longer as publicly reported as it once was, of actually forcing farmers to dump food stuffs during either a glut or also because it is not the right shape and size or has blemishes.

"As much as half of the water used to grow food globally may be lost or wasted," says Dr. Charlotte de Fraiture, a researcher at IWMI. "Curbing these losses and improving water productivity provides win-win opportunities for farmers, business, ecosystems, and the global hungry."

"An effective water-saving strategy requires that minimizing food wastage is firmly placed on the political agenda," she said.

In the United States, for instance, as much as 30 percent of food, worth some US$48.3 billion, is thrown away. "That's like leaving the tap running and pouring 40 trillion liters of water into the garbage can - enough water to meet the household needs of 500 million people," says the report.

The policy brief, "Saving Water: From Field to Fork - Curbing Losses and Wastage in the Food Chain," calls on governments to reduce by half, by 2025, the amount of food that is wasted after it is grown and outlines attainable steps for this be achieved.

"Unless we change our practices, water will be a key constraint to food production in the future," said Dr. Pasquale Steduto of FAO.

Water losses accumulate as food is wasted before and after it reaches the consumer.

In poorer countries, so the research found, a majority of uneaten food is lost before it even has a chance to be consumed. Depending on the crop, an estimated 15 to 35 percent of food may be lost in the field, while another 10 to15 percent is discarded during processing, transport and storage.

In richer countries, while production may be more efficient waste is by far greater, so states the report. "People toss the food they buy and all the resources used to grow, ship and produce the food along with it."

As this wasted food rots in landfills it generates methane, a gas that causes climate change and is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

With proper municipal composting facilities, however, this food waste would not even need to go into landfill and if we would permit the use of swill again, properly controlled and monitored, for the feeding of pigs then most of that food waste would be turned into calories and protein.

World Water Week was hosted by the Stockholm International Water Institute, a policy institute that contributes to international efforts to combat the world's escalating water crisis.

We must consider the one fact too in this wasted food, as it has been stated, and that is the wasted water, in the form of irrigation (and others), and this when water resources are getting – or could be getting – scarcer due to changes in climate and in rainfall patters.

As someone once said: the next war(s) will not be fought over territory but over access to water resources; a case that always was thus in countries such as Arabia, and such.

Water wars and skirmishes have been about in those places, as well as in other countries, throughout the ages. In future, however, it may actually not be a case of just a clan against another or a rancher against another one; it could indeed be one country against another over the perceived interference with water supply and such.

Whether or not any difference can be made by us in the realm of water resource management by not wasting food, with the exception of the fact that the less food is wastes the less there has to be grown and hence less water being used for watering the plants, does not matter too much either; not wasting food on its own should be enough incentive.

Further savings in the water department could be made if the developed world at least – for I know that the quality of the municipal water and other supplies in some countries out of that realm are dubious – would stop the wasteful practice of drinking bottled water. While a number of that stuff is tap water, which may or not have been filtered and such, there are still many brands that use well and spring water, and such extraction has a bad effect on the water table and the general natural water supply.

So, time we stopped wasting food and water...

© M Smith (Veshengro), August 2008
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