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The delivery of fresh water to those who need it is becoming increasingly important to an ever growing global population. In an ironic demonstration of karmic balance the benefits of plenty seem to be traded for the adverse environmental impacts that result from the exploitation of natural resources to provide those benefits. As our demand for potable water increases so does our proclivity for making its sources more impure.

More people than ever before are in desperate need of a ready source of potable water, especially in countries where crude methods for extrapolating minerals and poorly managed agricultural fertilization programs only aggravate an already critical situation wherein the ground water becomes contaminated.

People have generally regarded water as a given in areas that have plenty of it, and areas that do have generalized access to potable water also happen to have the highest gross domestic product per capita. Taking water for granted is the norm in first world countries. Unfortunately, this transcends to an undervaluation of the importance that water has on the global scale.

Statistics might cause one to rethink this perspective. Almost 69 percent of the Earth's fresh water exists in glaciers and ice caps, mostly in Greenland and Antarctica. Almost all of the rest is under our feet, with only 0.3 percent existing in rivers and lakes. If we include all of the rest of the planet's water - oceans, seas, and atmosphere - we find that over 99 percent of all of Earth's water is unusable.

Access to water does not guarantee access to safe water. A child dies every 8 seconds from drinking contaminated water. Twenty-six countries are classified as water-stressed, meaning that they cannot sustain agriculture and economic development using their existing water supplies. According to EarthCARE, by 2025 the number of people living in those water-stressed countries will increase six and a half times. We seem to be on the approach of a rising bell curve which sees the situation getting worse before it improves.

In fact, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) reports that supplies of fresh water for consumption and for agricultural and industrial use has not kept pace with population growth in Africa and The Middle East. It would therefore seem to be somewhat premature to make a prediction of when everybody worldwide will have enough clean, safe water to drink. In fact, it is apparent that clean, safe drinking water is becoming scarcer all the time,

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