Yes

by John Borden

Created on: June 23, 2007

No matter how many times the experts talk about water scarcity and conservation, no matter how hard they try to stress the importance of water as what may very well be one of the most valuable resources on this planet, some people just don't seem to get the idea that water needs to be treated with reverence rather than treated as, well, the stuff that seems to always come out of the faucet or the gardening hose whenever you want it to.

Water was at one time a pretty big deal, civilization always seemed to start where the water was, earlier wars were fought over the resource, gods were given the task of controlling water and how it's distributed among the people, we treated it with the reverence it so deserved.

Many years have passed since those first people settled around the river and formed the foundation of what would become human civilization. Even though it's been such a long time we still have the same amount of water as we did back then, it never really seems to go away, yet for some odd reason all the respect that it had received in the past seemed to...vanish in the industrialized regions of the world.

So why is it treated the way it is now? The reason could probably be blamed on something early man never seemed to get the hang of, heavy machinery. With the birth of industrialization came machines that made a lot of tasks far easier than the were before when they required human or animal power, and they also allowed us to do a lot of things we were unable to accomplish in the past. Making sure a city had adequate plumbing and that a crop got the proper amount of water through irrigation was much easier than before, and now we could drill to depths previously too difficult through human means, which gave us access to underground aquifers rich in water. Still the same amount of water since the first city was formed, but now we have far greater access to it.

Unfortunately, things have changed. Because of the fact that the population has essentially exploded in size comes greater demand for water and the resources that require water such as...pretty much everything if you think hard enough. Combine this with the fact that a great deal of water comes from those aquifers mentioned previously. Some aquifers can actually replenish their water reserves through various means, though the amount we take out often exceeds the amount that goes back in. Then there are the other aquifers that have no means of replenishing their reserves, when they run out they're out for good, the worst part is these "Fossil Aquifers" are often the larger of the two types. Now add to the two the issue of many bodies of water around the world shrinking in size, a good example of this phenomenon is Lake Chad which actually shrank from an area of 26,000 km in the 1960s to the present area of around 1,500 km.

Of course, water never really goes away, right? So I guess all this water is going somewhere. The problem is, it could be going anywhere, the water you used on your plants could very well be in the form of a cloud 500 or more miles away from where you live. Water is so easy to access because it's where we want it to be, in the form of bodies of water such as lakes and those wonderful little underground aquifers, rain is pretty swell but it's a little harder to harvest water from rain than it is to harvest water from a lake or a river, the oceans are filled with water but the problem is they're all made up of icky sea water which has to be put through this energy intensive process of removing the salt before it can be considered drinkable, glaciers and icebergs have plenty of fresh water but it's a bit of a hassle to melt them down so that you can drink them in your glass. Water is moving from being concentrated and easy to get state to a spread out and hard to find one.

Now that I've given that little lecture on the importance of water, maybe we should evaluate what matters most when it comes to the many uses of water, in the form of a list with the most important stuff on top and the least important on bottom, decide what matters most to you and what you can ease up on so as to conserve water.

- Water for drinking is important, can only last 3 days without it
- Food is pretty good, maybe we should save some water for growing food for you, me, how 'bout everybody?
- I like keeping clean, maybe we should keep it around for showering
- Industrial processes are pretty important, there are some pretty nifty things around you and me that require water
- Gardening is pretty fun, I guess we could put water down here
- Water is a beautiful thing, we could always put it in a fountain.

Think about it, there are so many more important things out there than gardening that require water, and here you are wasting it on keeping the grass green of all things! So come on, ease up on the water, how 'bout digging up some of that grass and setting up a nice little cactus garden instead, or maybe using some of that water to grow some of your very own tasty vegetables, but please don't continue to waste it on grass and please don't gripe to your city about unfair restrictions on the use of water and how ugly your lawn looks because of it.

After all, our improper use of water could come back to bite us in the but later on whenever we discover the aquifers are looking dry.

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