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Sustainable Living E3 | Water: Consumption and Conservation

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Sustainable Living E3 | Water: Consumption and Conservation

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Sustainable Living E3 | Water: Consumption and Conservation

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This page contains archived content and is no longer being updated. At the time of publication, it represented the best available science.

The Water Cycle

By Steve Graham, Claire Parkinson, and Mous Chahine Design by Robert Simmon

Viewed from space, one of the most striking features of our home planet is the water, in both liquid and frozen forms, that covers approximately 75% of the Earth's surface. Geologic evidence suggests that large amounts of water have likely flowed on Earth for the past 3.8 billion years-most of its existence. Believed to have initially arrived on the surface through the emissions of ancient volcanoes, water is a vital substance that sets the Earth apart from the rest of the planets in our solar system. In particular, water appears to be a necessary ingredient for the development and nourishment of life.

Water, Water, Everywhere

Water is practically everywhere on Earth. Moreover, it is the only known substance that can naturally exist as a gas, a liquid, and solid within the relatively small range of air temperatures and pressures found at the Earth's surface.

In all, the Earth's water content is about 1.39 billion cubic kilometers (331 million cubic miles), with the bulk of it, about 96.5%, being in the global oceans. As for the rest, approximately 1.7% is stored in the polar icecaps, glaciers, and permanent snow, and another 1.7% is stored in groundwater, lakes, rivers, streams, and soil. Only a thousandth of 1% of the water on Earth exists as water vapor in the atmosphere.

Despite its small amount, this water vapor has a huge influence on the planet. Water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas, and it is a major driver of the Earth's weather and climate as it travels around the globe, transporting latent heat with it. Latent heat is heat obtained by water molecules as they transition from liquid or solid to vapor; the heat is released when the molecules condense from vapor back to liquid or solid form, creating cloud droplets and various forms of precipitation.

Estimate of Global Water Distribution

Volume (1000 km³)

Percent of Total Water

Percent of Fresh Water

Source: Gleick, P. H., 1996: Water resources. In Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather, ed. by S. H. Schneider, Oxford University Press, New York, vol. 2, pp.817-823.

For human needs, the amount of freshwater on Earth-for drinking and agriculture-is particularly important. Freshwater exists in lakes, rivers, groundwater, and frozen as snow and ice. Estimates of groundwater are particularly difficult to make, and they vary widely. (The value in the above table is near the high end of the range.)

Groundwater may constitute anywhere from approximately 22 to 30% of fresh water, with ice (including ice caps, glaciers, permanent snow, ground ice, and permafrost) accounting for most of the remaining 78 to 70%.

A Multi-Phased Journey

The water, or hydrologic, cycle describes the pilgrimage of water as water molecules make their way from the Earth's surface to the atmosphere and back again, in some cases to below the surface. This gigantic system, powered by energy from the Sun, is a continuous exchange of moisture between the oceans, the atmosphere, and the land.

Studies have revealed that evaporation-the process by which water changes from a liquid to a gas-from oceans, seas, and other bodies of water (lakes, rivers, streams) provides nearly 90% of the moisture in our atmosphere. Most of the remaining 10% found in the atmosphere is released by plants through transpiration. Plants take in water through their roots, then release it through small pores on the underside of their leaves. In addition, a very small portion of water vapor enters the atmosphere through sublimation, the process by which water changes directly from a solid (ice or snow) to a gas. The gradual shrinking of snow banks in cases when the temperature remains below freezing results from sublimation.

Together, evaporation, transpiration, and sublimation, plus volcanic emissions, account for almost all the water vapor in the atmosphere that isn't inserted through human activities. While evaporation from the oceans is the primary vehicle for driving the surface-to-atmosphere portion of the hydrologic cycle, transpiration is also significant. For example, a cornfield 1 acre in size can transpire as much as 4,000 gallons of water every day.

After the water enters the lower atmosphere, rising air currents carry it upward, often high into the atmosphere, where the air is cooler. In the cool air, water vapor is more likely to condense from a gas to a liquid to form cloud droplets. Cloud droplets can grow and produce precipitation (including rain, snow, sleet, freezing rain, and hail), which is the primary mechanism for transporting water from the atmosphere back to the Earth's surface.

When precipitation falls over the land surface, it follows various routes in its subsequent paths. Some of it evaporates, returning to the atmosphere; some seeps into the ground as soil moisture or groundwater; and some runs off into rivers and streams. Almost all of the water eventually flows into the oceans or other bodies of water, where the cycle continues. At different stages of the cycle, some of the water is intercepted by humans or other life forms for drinking, washing, irrigating, and a large variety of other uses.

Groundwater is found in two broadly defined layers of the soil, the "zone of aeration," where gaps in the soil are filled with both air and water, and, further down, the "zone of saturation," where the gaps are completely filled with water. The boundary between these two zones is known as the water table, which rises or falls as the amount of groundwater changes.

The amount of water in the atmosphere at any moment in time is only 12,900 cubic kilometers, a minute fraction of Earth's total water supply: if it were to completely rain out, atmospheric moisture would cover the Earth's surface to a depth of only 2.5 centimeters. However, far more water-in fact, some 495,000 cubic kilometers of it-are cycled through the atmosphere every year. It is as if the entire amount of water in the air were removed and replenished nearly 40 times a year.

Water continually evaporates, condenses, and precipitates, and on a global basis, evaporation approximately equals precipitation. Because of this equality, the total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere remains approximately the same over time. However, over the continents, precipitation routinely exceeds evaporation, and conversely, over the oceans, evaporation exceeds precipitation.

In the case of the oceans, the continual excess of evaporation versus precipitation would eventually leave the oceans empty if they were not being replenished by additional means. Not only are they being replenished, largely through runoff from the land areas, but over the past 100 years, they have been over- replenished: sea level around the globe has risen approximately 17 centimeters over the course of the twentieth century.

Sea level has risen both because of warming of the oceans, causing water to expand and increase in volume, and because more water has been entering the ocean than the amount leaving it through evaporation or other means. A primary cause for increased mass of water entering the ocean is the calving or melting of land ice (ice sheets and glaciers). Sea ice is already in the ocean, so increases or decreases in the annual amount of sea ice do not significantly affect sea level.

Throughout the hydrologic cycle, there are many paths that a water molecule might follow. Water at the bottom of Lake Superior may eventually rise into the atmosphere and fall as rain in Massachusetts. Runoff from the Massachusetts rain may drain into the Atlantic Ocean and circulate northeastward toward Iceland, destined to become part of a floe of sea ice, or, after evaporation to the atmosphere and precipitation as snow, part of a glacier.

Water molecules can take an immense variety of routes and branching trails that lead them again and again through the three phases of ice, liquid water, and water vapor. For instance, the water molecules that once fell 100 years ago as rain on your great- grandparents' farmhouse in Iowa might now be falling as snow on your driveway in California.

The Water Cycle and Climate Change

Among the most serious Earth science and environmental policy issues confronting society are the potential changes in the Earth's water cycle due to climate change. The science community now generally agrees that the Earth's climate is undergoing changes in response to natural variability, including solar variability, and increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols. Furthermore, agreement is widespread that these changes may profoundly affect atmospheric water vapor concentrations, clouds, precipitation patterns, and runoff and stream flow patterns.

For example, as the lower atmosphere becomes warmer, evaporation rates will increase, resulting in an increase in the amount of moisture circulating throughout the troposphere (lower atmosphere). An observed consequence of higher water vapor concentrations is the increased frequency of intense precipitation events, mainly over land areas. Furthermore, because of warmer temperatures, more precipitation is falling as rain rather than snow.

In parts of the Northern Hemisphere, an earlier arrival of spring-like conditions is leading to earlier peaks in snowmelt and resulting river flows. As a consequence, seasons with the highest water demand, typically summer and fall, are being impacted by a reduced availability of fresh water.

Warmer temperatures have led to increased drying of the land surface in some areas, with the effect of an increased incidence and severity of drought. The Palmer Drought Severity Index, which is a measure of soil moisture using precipitation measurements and rough estimates of changes in evaporation, has shown that from 1900 to 2002, the Sahel region of Africa has been experiencing harsher drought conditions. This same index also indicates an opposite trend in southern South America and the south central United States.

While the brief scenarios described above represent a small portion of the observed changes in the water cycle, it should be noted that many uncertainties remain in the prediction of future climate. These uncertainties derive from the sheer complexity of the climate system, insufficient and incomplete data sets, and inconsistent results given by current climate models. However, state of the art (but still incomplete and imperfect) climate models do consistently predict that precipitation will become more variable, with increased risks of drought and floods at different times and places.

Observing the Water Cycle

Orbiting satellites are now collecting data relevant to all aspects of the hydrologic cycle, including evaporation, transpiration, condensation, precipitation, and runoff. NASA even has one satellite, Aqua, named specifically for the information it is collecting about the many components of the water cycle.

Aqua launched on May 4, 2002, with six Earth-observing instruments: the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU), the Humidity Sounder for Brazil (HSB), the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for the Earth Observing System (AMSR-E), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES).

Since water vapor is the Earth's primary greenhouse gas, and it contributes significantly to uncertainties in projections of future global warming, it is critical to understand how it varies in the Earth system. In the first years of the Aqua mission, AIRS, AMSU, and HSB provided space-based measurements of atmospheric temperature and water vapor that were more accurate than any obtained before; the sensors also made measurements from more altitudes than any previous sensor. The HSB is no longer operational, but the AIRS/AMSU system continues to provide high-quality atmospheric temperature and water vapor measurements.

More recent studies using AIRS data have demonstrated that most of the warming caused by carbon dioxide does not come directly from carbon dioxide, but rather from increased water vapor and other factors that amplify the initial warming. Other studies have shown improved estimation of the landfall of a hurricane in the Bay of Bengal by incorporating AIRS temperature measurements, and improved understanding of large-scale atmospheric patterns such as the Madden-Julian Oscillation.

In addition to their importance to our weather, clouds play a major role in regulating Earth's climate system. MODIS, CERES, and AIRS all collect data relevant to the study of clouds. The cloud data include the height and area of clouds, the liquid water they contain, and the sizes of cloud droplets and ice particles. The size of cloud particles affects how they reflect and absorb incoming sunlight, and the reflectivity (albedo) of clouds plays a major role in Earth's energy balance.

One of the many variables AMSR-E monitors is global precipitation. The sensor measures microwave energy, some of which passes through clouds, and so the sensor can detect the rainfall even under the clouds.

Water in the atmosphere is hardly the only focus of the Aqua mission. Among much else, AMSR-E and MODIS are being used to study sea ice. Sea ice is important to the Earth system not just as an important element in the habitat of polar bears, penguins, and some species of seals, but also because it can insulate the underlying liquid water against heat loss to the often frigid overlying polar atmosphere and because it reflects sunlight that would otherwise be available to warm the ocean.

When it comes to sea ice, AMSR-E and MODIS provide complementary information. AMSR-E doesn't record as much detail about ice features as MODIS does, but it can distinguish ice versus open water even when it is cloudy. The AMSR-E measurements continue, with improved resolution and accuracy, a satellite record of changes in the extent of polar ice that extends back to the 1970s.

AMSR-E and MODIS also provide monitoring of snow coverage over land, another key indicator of climate change. As with sea ice, AMSR-E allows routine monitoring of the snow, irrespective of cloud cover, but with less spatial detail, while MODIS sees greater spatial detail, but only under cloud-free conditions.

As for liquid water on land, AMSR-E provides information about soil moisture, which is crucial for vegetation including agricultural crops. AMSR-E's monitoring of soil moisture globally permits, for example, the early identification of signs of drought.

More Water Cycle Observations

Aqua is the most comprehensive of NASA's water cycle missions, but it isn't alone. In fact, the Terra satellite also has MODIS and CERES instruments onboard, and several other spacecraft have made or are making unique water-cycle measurements.

The Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) was launched in January 2003, and it collected data on the topography of the Earth's ice sheets, clouds, vegetation, and the thickness of sea ice off and on until October 2009. A new ICESat mission, ICESat-2, is now under development and is scheduled to launch in 2015.

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) is a unique mission that consists of two spacecraft orbiting one behind the other; changes in the distance between the two provide information about the gravity field on the Earth below. Because gravity depends on mass, some of the changes in gravity over time signal a shift in water from one place on Earth to another. Through measurements of changing gravity fields, GRACE scientists are able to derive information about changes in the mass of ice sheets and glaciers and even changes in groundwater around the world.

CloudSat is advancing scientists' understanding of cloud abundance, distribution, structure, and radiative properties (how they absorb and emit energy, including thermal infrared energy escaping from Earth's surface). Since 2006, CloudSat has flown the first satellite-based, millimeter-wavelength cloud radar-an instrument that is 1000 times more sensitive than existing weather radars on the ground. Unlike ground-based weather radars that use centimeter wavelengths to detect raindrop-sized particles, CloudSat's radar allows the detection of the much smaller particles of liquid water and ice in the large cloud masses that contribute significantly to our weather.

The joint NASA and French Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) is providing new insight into the role that clouds and atmospheric aerosols (particles like dust and pollution) play in regulating Earth's weather, climate, and air quality. CALIPSO combines an active laser instrument with passive infrared and visible imagers to probe the vertical structure and properties of thin clouds and aerosols over the globe.

1. References

2. Ahrens, C. (1994). Meteorology: An Introduction to Weather, Climate, and the Environment. St. Paul: West Publishing Company.

3. Chahine, M. (1992). The hydrological cycle and its influence on climate. Nature, 359, 373-380.

4. Lutgens, F., and Tarbuck, E. (1998). The Atmosphere: An Introduction to Meteorology. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.

5. Kundzewicz, Z. W., Mata, L. J., Arnell, N. W., Döll, P., Kabat, P., Jiménez, B., Miller, K. A., et al. (2007). Freshwater resources and their management. In M.L. Parry, O.F. Canziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. van der Linden, and C.E. Hanson, (Eds.), Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (173-210). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

6. Moran, J., and Morgan, M. (1997). Meteorology: The Atmosphere and the Science of Weather. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.

7. Parkinson, C. L. (2010). Coming Climate Crisis? Consider the Past, Beware the Big Fix. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

8. Rosenzweig, C., Casassa, G., Karoly, D.J., Imeson, A., Liu, C., Menzel, A., Rawlins, A., Root, T.L., Seguin, B., and Tryjanowski, P. (2007). Assessment of observed changes and responses in natural and managed systems. In M.L. Parry, O.F. Canziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. van der Linden, and C.E. Hanson, (Eds.), Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (79-131). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

9. Schneider, S. (1996). Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather. New York: Oxford University Press.

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This page contains archived content and is no longer being updated. At the time of publication, it represented the best available science. By Steve Graham, Claire Parkinson, and Mous Chahine Design by Robert Simmon Viewed from space, one of the most striking features of our home planet is the water, in both liquid and frozen forms, that covers approximately 75% of the Earth's surface.

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The Big Empty: Rural America's Drinking Water Crisis

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The Big Empty: Rural America's Drinking Water Crisis

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The Big Empty: Rural America's Drinking Water Crisis

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The following is not a full transcript; for full story, listen to audio.

The statistics are gross in almost every sense of the word. Ninety percent of the developing world's sewage is dumped untreated into oceans, rivers and lakes. Forty percent of the world's population, or 2.6 billion people, have no access to at toilet. One gram of feces can contain ten million viruses, one million bacteria, one thousand parasite cysts and one hundred worm eggs.

Bob Edwards spoke with journalist Rose George, author of "The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters."

Rose George began her research in the sewers of London. There she met with the flushers of London's sewers, named after the 19th century flushers who used rakes to flush the sewer contents down to the Thames River untreated.

Before London's vast system of sewer tunnels was built, the city used on-site sanitation, which meant cesspools in the backyards of Londoners. But as London's population increased, the system became grossly inadequate. When the service of emptying cesspools cleanly and hygienically became too expensive, people began discharging their cesspools directly into the Thames, culminating in "The Great Stink" of 1858.

"All the stuff going into the Thames obviously did not bode well for the noses of the metropolis," says George. The summer of 1858 was hot and the smell was overwhelming for the Houses of Parliament with a front to the Thames. "The MPs held handkerchiefs to their noses while in the debating chamber and the curtains were soaked in lime and chloride to try and mask the smell." Britain's politicians passed a bill in a record-breaking ten days to build the sewers of London.

During this time perfume and high heels became popular in London and Paris as city dwellers were forced to wade through filth in the streets.

London had the good fortune to employ the engineer, Sir Joseph Bazalgette. "Bazalgette is the least remembered in fact, even though he probably did the most to expand our lifespan and certainly banished cholera from the streets of London," says George. Bazelgette orchestrated the construction of a network of sewers that now reaches about 30 thousand miles between London and Redding.

"At the time Bazalgette simply discharged all the sewage into the Thames again, but about twenty years after that he saw the light, after a terrible steamboat disaster when people died probably coughing from the sewage that was in the river water. Treatment plants were built at the outer reaches of the Thames and are still there today."

Rose George does not like to use the word waste. In the United States and the United Kingdom, human waste is not wasted. "The liquid is cleaned and discharged into a water cause nearby. The solids actually end up as fertilizer." But the use of biosolids, as they are known in the United States, is a cause for debate about whether this fertilizer should be used on land and for food crops. More than just human waste goes down sewers, it also contains industrial waste and pharmaceuticals ingested by people.

While 90 percent of sewage in the developng world goes untreated, sewage treatment is in the developed world is not perfect either. Waste water infrastructure suffers from underfunding, and sewer systems are not equipped to handle the ongoing growth in urban populations. "In London, our sewers were built for three million people and they were built with over-capacity because Bazalgette was such a wonderful engineer, but they now must serve about 10 to 15 million people, and the same happens in New York." As a result, when sewers are overwhelmed, raw sewage is discharged into waterways.

"Because human waste can carry up to fifty communicable diseases, it is in fact a very potent weapon of mass destruction, which is why there is such a horrible death toll of children related to poor sanitation."

Chinese farmers have been using human waste as fertilizers for thousands of years. Now a government program provides another function for human waste, an energy supply. Biogas digesters are underground sealed tanks that digest human or animal excrement. The methane gas released can be used ad an energy supply for cooking.

But of all the countries Rose George visited, Indians live in the most close quarters with human waste. "The statistics in India are so stunning, seven hundred million people without toilets." As a result, open defecation is practiced in India, but it also has a robust history of activism about sanitation.

Rose George investigated positive developments in the sanitation movement. While visiting the World Toilet Organization conference in Moscow, she found sanitation foot soldiers trying to make improvements in their own corners of the world. The Big Necessity explores this topic most of us don't like to think about, human waste and what to do with it.

Bob Edwards Weekend" is a two-hour interview showcase, in which celebrated host Bob Edwards highlights the life and work of interesting people, from newsmakers, historians, and authors to artists, actors, and regular folks too. The show is produced by XM Satellite Radio and distributed nationwide by PRI.
More "Bob Edwards Weekend"

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The following is not a full transcript; for full story, listen to audio. The statistics are gross in almost every sense of the word. Ninety percent of the developing world's sewage is dumped untreated into oceans, rivers and lakes. Forty percent of the world's population, or 2.6 billion people, have no access to at toilet.

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Why millions of Americans could be drinking bad water - BBC News

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Domestic households, industrial and agricultural practices produce wastewater that can cause pollution of many lakes and rivers.

Sewage is the term used for wastewater that often contains faeces, urine and laundry waste.

There are billions of people on Earth, so treating sewage is a big priority.

Sewage disposal is a major problem in developing countries as many people in these areas don't have access to sanitary conditions and clean water.

Untreated sewage water in such areas can contaminate the environment and cause diseases such as diarrhoea.

Sewage in developed countries is carried away from the home quickly and hygienically through sewage pipes.

Sewage is treated in water treatment plants and the waste is often disposed into the sea.

Sewage is mainly biodegradable and most of it is broken down in the environment.

In developed countries, sewage often causes problems when people flush chemical and pharmaceutical substances down the toilet. When people are ill, sewage often carries harmful viruses and bacteria into the environment causing health problems.

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Sewage and Wastewater Pollution - Water Pollution

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Domestic households, industrial and agricultural practices produce wastewater that can cause pollution of many lakes and rivers. Sewage is the term used for wastewater that often contains faeces, urine and laundry waste. There are billions of people on Earth, so treating sewage is a big priority.

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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Flint's water crisis, explained in 3 minutes

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Flushing the Toilet has Never Been Riskier

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Flushing the Toilet has Never Been Riskier

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Flushing toilets enable most Americans to make their own waste disappear as if by magic, but most would be hard-pressed to answer this simple question: When you flush, where does it go?

Septic tank owners, about 20 percent of Americans, are most likely to be able to give an accurate answer, because they're responsible for the maintenance of their own sewage-disposal systems. A flush from one of their toilets sends wastewater to a tank buried on their property, where the waste products separate into solid and liquid layers and partially decompose. The liquid layer flows out of the tank and into a drainfield that disperses it into the soil, where naturally occurring microbes remove harmful bacteria, viruses, and nutrients. The solid layer stays behind in the form of sludge that must be pumped out periodically as part of routine maintenance. If the tank is properly designed and maintained, those bacteria, viruses, and nutrients stay out of groundwater and surface water that people may use for drinking water, and they never reach surface water bodies where people swim or boat.

The vast majority of the 80 percent of Americans who don't use septic tanks are served by municipal water-treatment plants. Waste from their homes is whisked immediately off the premises, never to be seen, smelled, or considered again. Pipes carry waste from these homes to wastewater-treatment plants that, in some ways, work like a septic tank on a very large scale.

Just as in a septic tank, the solid and liquid wastes are separated first in a process known as primary treatment. Next, as in a septic tank's drainfield, bacteria break down contaminants in a process called secondary treatment. After that, treatment with chlorine kills the remaining bacteria. Then, in some communities, special treatment technologies remove contaminants that are of special concern, such as phosphorus or nitrogen. When the process is complete, the treated waste meets regulatory standards and is released to a nearby water body-that is, if all goes well. If all doesn't go well-perhaps the treatment plant suffers an outage or there's more waste than the plant was designed to treat-untreated waste can be released to surface water.
Sometimes the overflow is so significant that the stormwater-and-sewage mixture backs up into the streets where people walk.
As treatment plants age across the United States and as the country's population grows, these releases are becoming more problematic, contributing to the serious surface-water problems that crop up frequently in the news. Harmful algal blooms like the one that cost Toledo, Ohio, its drinking water last summer, fish kills like the one recently reported off Long Island, and the much-discussed dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico are all fed by phosphorus, nitrogen, and other contaminants found in the untreated sewage that, according to EPA estimates, flows out of America's treatment plants during the 23,000 to 75,000 sanitary-sewer overflows that happen per year.

The causes of these water-quality issues are complex, because the same pollutants can be washed into surface water from agricultural land, industrial sites, and fertilized lawns dotted with pet waste, but the 3 to 10 billion gallons of untreated waste released from our sewage-treatment plants per year cannot help but have an impact.

Specifically, they affect the water you swim in and the water you drink.

A number of studies, including this one from 2010, have found that emergency room visits for gastrointestinal distress increase after a heavy rain. These illnesses are believed to spike after a storm because rainwater washes pathogens into lakes and rivers used for recreation and drinking water. A 2015 study published in Environmental Health Perspectives goes a step further than earlier research by pointing to a common type of municipal sewage-treatment system, combined-sewer systems, as an important factor in these illnesses.

The EPA has called overflows from combined sewer systems " the largest category of our Nation's wastewater infrastructure that still need to be addressed, " affecting Americans in 32 states, including the District of Columbia. The agency has been working with municipal water systems to address the problem for decades and much progress has been made, but to understand why it's taking so long, you have to consider history. You also have to consider the massive costs that come with making changes to public works that have served millions of people for more than a century.

Combined sewers collect human waste, industrial waste, and stormwater runoff into a single pipe for treatment and disposal. (In other municipalities, these waste streams are handled separately.) In dry weather, a combined sewer ordinarily carries a relatively low volume of waste, delivering it to publicly owned treatment works, or POTWs for short, that are designed to handle that flow. In plain terms, when a combined sewer system is functioning properly, you can generally trust that when you flush, the contents of the toilet bowl end up where they're supposed to go.

Things change when it rains in communities served by combined sewers. Because a combined system must handle surges of stormwater, rainfall markedly increases the volume of waste that its equipment must handle, making this type of sewage system particularly likely to overflow into surface water. As these diagrams show, they were designed to do this as a fail-safe for system failures that were intended to be rare but aren't any longer. If you're accustomed to a faint smell of sewage in the streets after a rainstorm, these diagrams will show you why.

Unfortunately, the receiving waters for these rain-induced spills are sometimes the same water bodies that are used for drinking water, and sometimes people swim there, too. And sometimes the overflow is so significant that the stormwater-and-sewage mixture backs up into the streets where people walk.

Is it any wonder that rainy weather often triggers a spike in stomach bugs and beach closures?

Given what's at stake, why are upgrades to aging systems taking so long? Consider this map of the 772 American communities with combined-sewer systems.

Most combined systems are concentrated in the older cities of the Northeast and the Great Lakes region, but they also exist in other older cities as far-flung as Atlanta, Memphis, and San Francisco. In other words, the systems that pose risks today happen to be the ones-state-of-the-art when they were built, but not today-that are in some of the biggest cities in America, which have a combined population of approximately 40 million people.
The first sewers were invented when we didn't have any toilets.
If you're feeling relieved to see that your hometown isn't marked on the map, remember that fecal-coliform bacteria don't always stay close to home. Waste spilled into the Ohio River affects everyone down the Ohio and the Mississippi, and it contributes to the ongoing woes of the Gulf of Mexico. Even if you don't live in the Northeast, along the Ohio, in the Great Lakes region, along the Mississippi, or on the Gulf Coast, bear in mind that 40 percent of the commercial seafood caught in the continental U.S. comes from the Gulf of Mexico. In other words, when Cincinnati's sewer system overflows into the Ohio, it intrudes into the food chain of a lot of people.

The EPA calls combined sewers "remnants of the country's early infrastructure." The first sewers weren't designed to handle the constant and huge stream of wastes from our toilets, because they were invented when we didn't have any toilets. Sewers were originally built to solve the problems of cities that were flooded with their own refuse-garbage, animal manure, and human waste left in the open rather than in a privy or latrine-during every rainstorm. To prevent that flooding, the fouled stormwater was shunted out of town and into the nearest handy receptacle, which was often a lake, river, stream, or ocean.

When flush toilets became common in the mid-1800s, they were piped into these existing sewers, introducing much more human waste, as well as a large volume of water that had never been there before. In some ways, this was a design feature, not a bug, because the burst of stormwater flushed out pipes that might have otherwise gotten clogged. This flush of rainwater also diluted the waste before it hit a nearby river.

In time, though, dilution wasn't enough to keep waterways safe and attractive, and sewage treatment plants were invented to clean up the waste stream before releasing it to water bodies. Newer cities, which were starting from scratch, generally handled stormwater separately from human and industrial wastes from the start, but cities whose sewer systems had always been combined continued to treat both waste streams together.
It is common for cities with combined-sewer systems to advise citizens to stay out of the water for days after any rainfall.
As the older cities grew larger, their combined-treatment systems struggled to keep up, and growing populations weren't the only factor. Time itself exacerbated their woes. In Hoboken, for example, some sewer lines date back to the Civil War. Common sense says that pipes that have been buried for a century and a half tend to leak. Over time, they also get clogged with debris or even congealed cooking oil, resulting in narrowed pipes that overflow even more easily.

When narrowed pipes are already overloaded, the added influx of stormwater when it rains becomes just too much water. Now, some cities experience overflows with less than a quarter-inch of rain, with resulting risks to human health. It is common for cities with combined-sewer systems to advise citizens to stay out of the water for days after any rainfall. And now the Environmental Health Perspectives study suggests that after a very heavy rain, those overflows may be affecting their communities' drinking water, too.

What is being done? Combined sewers have been an EPA priority for many years and, after decades of significant effort, the numbers are starting to move in the right direction, but this is not a problem that can be turned around quickly or cheaply. New York City's combined sewers are still the single largest source of pathogens to the New York Harbor system, according to the New York Department of Environmental Protection. A single 2014 storm triggered a release into Lake Erie from Detroit, Michigan, of more than 44 million gallons of raw sewage from sanitary sewers and almost 3 billion gallons from combined sewers, and such releases from Detroit and the other cities with sewer outfalls on Lake Erie contribute to the fact that it blooms with algae every summer. Last summer, one of those algal blooms cost Toledo its drinking water for two days, and this year's harmful algal blooms were projected to be even worse than last year's.

As with any engineering project, the benefits of reducing overflows to zero-an effort estimated by the EPA in 2004 to cost $88.8 billion-must be weighed against its cost.

"We mustn't forget the hugely successful effort in the 1970s and 1980s to provide secondary treatment at virtually every sewage-treatment plant in the country," said Wayne Huber, a professor emeritus of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State University. As an example, he describes what happened in Portland, Oregon, where a system of tunnels now contains 90 percent of the city's stormwater surges. "Portland spent about $500 million on its deep tunnels and pumping system," Huber said. "This has reduced the number of releases into the Willamette River from maybe 50 to 100 per year to five to ten per year."

Huber also highlights Philadelphia's "green technology" strategy to reduce overflows to the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. Since avoiding massive construction is often synonymous with avoiding massive expenditures, Philadelphia's use of approaches like rain gardens and green roofs to divert stormwater from the waste stream going to its treatment plants could serve as a model for other municipalities struggling with the same problems.

Huber cautions against relying on a single approach, saying that "green technology seeks to avoid large investments in infrastructure by keeping stormwater out of the combined sewer in the first place, but in heavily urbanized areas that is seldom an option, hence the massive storage projects that we see in cities like Chicago."

On the individual level, people concerned about wastewater can give some thought to the fertilizer, pesticides, trash, and animal waste that wash off of lawns and into sewer systems, lakes, rivers, and oceans. As citizens, they can also advocate at local, state, and federal levels for improvements. People can reduce stormwater flow by planting their own rain gardens and green roofs-and by being judicious about the way they water our lawns and wash their cars. Sometimes, doing the right thing is as simple as being careful about what goes into storm drains and toilets.

After hearing about the plume of sewage, littered with used condoms and tampons, that emanated from Philadelphia's sewer outfalls prior to the city's upgrade, it's hard to look at flushing the toilet the same way. If Americans want to be able to drink tap water or swim at beaches after it rains, they have to keep trying to improve wastewater infrastructure, even if the size of the problem boggles the mind.

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Flushing the Toilet Has Never Been Riskier

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Flushing toilets enable most Americans to make their own waste disappear as if by magic, but most would be hard-pressed to answer this simple question: When you flush, where does it go?

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When is water safe to drink? - Mia Nacamulli

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'People Are Literally Being Poisoned': How Sewage Problems in Alabama Got So Bad -- and Why Other States Should Worry

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'People Are Literally Being Poisoned': How Sewage Problems in Alabama Got So Bad -- and Why Other States Should Worry

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DANIEL VOCK | 2018

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Alabama's Lowndes County, which lies between Selma and Montgomery, has been coping with basic sewage problems for decades.

Most residents of this rural county, who are predominantly poor and black, live too far from cities to attach their homes to sewer systems. So they rely on septic tanks. But installing and maintaining those septic systems is difficult -- not only because they're so expensive but also because they have to be specially designed to work in the region's clay-rich soil.

As a result, many people who live in Lowndes County have open pits of human waste in their yards or raw sewage backing up into their homes after heavy rains. Neither the county nor the state seems to be in any position to help, and at times, they've arguably made things worse.

The situation has received little attention outside of Alabama -- until recently.

After Baylor University researchers found evidence of hookworm, a tropical disease that's largely been eradicated in most developed countries, in more than a third of the residents they sampled in Lowndes County, a United Nations poverty investigator visited the area last December.

"I think it's very uncommon in the First World. This is not a sight that one normally sees. I'd have to say that I haven't seen this," remarked Philip Alston, the UN's Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, as he toured a nearby county.

Suddenly, national and international media are taking an interest in Lowndes County's long-festering issues. But they've been slower to recognize how widespread the problem of poor sewage treatment is in the United States.

"It's not just in Alabama. A lot of rural communities are experiencing the same problem," says Catherine Flowers, who has been the area's most prominent advocate for improving its sewage disposal and the associated problems. "This is a problem around the country that shouldn't exist."

Flowers has talked with advocates dealing with similar issues from nearly a dozen states, including Alaska, California, Kentucky and Virginia. Leaky septic tanks cause algae blooms that close beaches on New York's Long Island. They threaten dolphins and other aquatic wildlife in Florida. Fewer than half of homes on Native American reservations are connected to sewers.

One thing that many of the areas have in common, Flowers says, is that they are already poor and populated by members of marginalized groups. Certainly that's the case in Lowndes County, where African-Americans make up 73 percent of the population.

"The problem with Lowndes County is that Lowndes County has no money," says Flowers, who previously worked for the county trying to attract economic development -- a difficult job, she says, because it didn't have the infrastructure to support new business ventures.

In other words, the county remained poor because it was already poor.

Asking the state for help isn't much of an option either, Flowers says. Alabama is the sixth-poorest state in the union. It can't afford to bear the brunt of paying for infrastructure upgrades, especially for private residences.

Because of this, advocates are looking to Congress and to outside innovators for solutions.

Making a Bad Situation Worse

Over the years, the county and the state have exacerbated this crisis.

In 2002, the government threatened to jail more than 37 residents for inadequate sewage treatment. (Alabama state law makes it a misdemeanor "to build, maintain or use an insanitary sewage collection, treatment and disposal facility.") But most of them couldn't afford to spend thousands of dollars to upgrade their equipment. Judges had a hard time forcing them to put in new sewage systems, and residents rallied against the harsh enforcement tactics.

Eventually, the county backed down.

As part of the resolution, the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise, a group that Flowers founded, agreed to help residents install new septic systems in partnership with the state health department.

But after a few years, many of those new systems failed too.

The types of septic systems that work in most places in the country don't function properly in the Black Belt, the swath of central Alabama and northeast Mississippi known for its dark, fertile soil as well as its large population of African-American residents. Unlike sewers, which whisk wastewater away through pipes to a water treatment center, septic tanks filter the water on-site and release it underground. They rely on the natural filtration of the soil to eliminate the worst contaminants. But in the Black Belt, layers of chalk and clay under the topsoil prevent the wastewater from spreading properly underground.

So after the new systems failed, Alabama activists decided they needed a better handle on what the underlying problems were. It took eight years, but they eventually got federal funding for researchers to do a house-to-house survey of sewage systems.

They discovered that the problem was more complex than many had believed.

It wasn't just that people were "straight piping" their sewage into backyard lagoons or trenches. Septic systems that had been installed were failing at high rates, too. In fact, even residents on municipal sewer systems complained about sewage back-ups.

Despite these issues, most people weren't complaining to government authorities.

"If you complain to the health department, you're mandated to fix it yourself. So people don't complain, because at the end of the day, they're going to be held responsible and maybe even subject to arrest," says Flowers.

Disputed Findings

Flowers got a firsthand view of the potential health consequences of the poor sanitation several years ago. It was October when she visited the home of a young, pregnant woman who was being investigated by the county. Flowers walked around the back of the house and saw a pool of raw sewage in the yard, with mosquitoes flying around it. It was an unusual sight, she says, because October is usually past mosquito season, even in Alabama. Several mosquitoes bit her, and the next day, she broke out in a rash all over her body that didn't go away for months.

Flowers asked her doctor to run tests to see if she had contracted an illness from the mosquitoes near the raw sewage, but nothing came up.

A year later, Flowers saw an op-ed in The New York Times discussing the growing spread of tropical diseases in poor areas of the United States. Soon, she was in Atlanta talking to the author, and the plans for the hookworm study came out of those conversations.

It took the Baylor researchers three years to conduct the study and publish the results in a peer-reviewed journal (Flowers is listed as one of the authors). They found evidence of hookworm in 19 of the 55 residents they tested.

"The discovery of these parasitic diseases within the United States begins to shift the idea behind global health. One concept ... reveals that many of the world's neglected tropical diseases are paradoxically found in some of the wealthiest countries, especially in these regions of extreme poverty. With the introduction of more advanced diagnostic techniques, emergence of rare, endemic infections may eventually become less defined by geographic location, but more by economic status," they wrote.

Alabama's state health department disputed the findings.

Dr. Mary McIntyre, the state's epidemiologist, said the Baylor-led study "used an experimental technology that was not FDA-approved." Using more conventional methods, McIntyre reported that "no evidence of hookworm infection was found" among the residents tested in the original study. (The Baylor researchers said in their paper that their approach was more sensitive and, therefore, could detect lower levels of infection than the method used by McIntyre.)

Outside Help

With little hope of getting state or local resources to solve the problem soon, the region is looking for outside help. Researchers from several universities and federal agencies have spread throughout the 17 counties of Alabama's Black Belt to get a handle on the scope of the problem and determine how it's affecting the local environment.

Meanwhile, Flowers has been talking with Kartik Chandran, a Columbia University environmental engineering professor and a recipient of a MacArthur genius grant. Chandran's work focuses on how to use human waste and other wastewater to generate energy, produce agricultural fertilizers and other practical applications.

Chandran says the problems faced by Alabama's Black Belt are similar to issues that many communities face worldwide, especially in places where it's not practical to lay sewer pipes and build wastewater treatment plants. One-fifth of the U.S. population uses septic systems, he notes. But pollution regulations for septic systems tend to be more lax than they are for big sewer systems, which means that they lead to more contamination.

"We know this is a significant problem, and we need to start to addressing it," he says.

Chandran suggests that the solution in Alabama may be treating more waste in buildings and, if feasible, connecting more residences to sewer systems. But coming up with a plan would require more research, he says.

"We have to go there and come up with a holistic solution."

Meanwhile, there is a chance that the federal government could step in, too. U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, has visited Lowndes County to find out more about the sanitation issues there.

"People are literally being poisoned," he told reporters after his visit. "These are our children and elderly folks living in a toxic environment."

Last month, Booker worked with U.S. Sen. Doug Jones, the newly elected Democrat from Alabama, and U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican, to allow low- and middle-income homeowners to use a federal grant program to help install or maintain septic systems. The amendment came as part of the Senate's version of the farm bill this year, but the language was not included in the House's version of the legislation.
This appears in the Infrastructure newsletter. Subscribe for free.

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'People Are Literally Being Poisoned': How Sewage Problems in Alabama Got So Bad -- and Why Other States Should Worry

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Alabama's Lowndes County, which lies between Selma and Montgomery, has been coping with basic sewage problems for decades. Most residents of this rural county, who are predominantly poor and black, live too far from cities to attach their homes to sewer systems. So they rely on septic tanks.

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Vox | Explained |

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Explained | World's Water Crisis | FULL EPISODE | Netflix

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3.5 million Americans get sick each year after swimming, boating, fishing, or otherwise touching water they thought was safe.

Where does human waste mingle with household chemicals, personal hygiene products, pharmaceuticals, and everything else that goes down the drains in American homes and businesses?

In sewers.

And what can you get when rain, pesticides, fertilizers, automotive chemicals, and trash run off the streets and down the gutters into those very same sewers? Sewage backing up into people's basements. Sewage spilling onto streets and parks. Sewage pouring into rivers and streams.

Each year, more than 860 billion gallons of this vile brew escapes sewer systems across the country. That's enough to flood all of Pennsylvania ankle-deep. It's enough for every American to take one bath each week for an entire year.

After bursting out of a pipe or manhole cover, this foul slurry pollutes the nearest body of water. Downstream, some of it may be pumped out, treated, and piped into more homes and businesses. From there, it goes back into a sewer system, and the cycle resumes.

A threat to human health

Untreated human sewage teems with salmonella, hepatitis, dysentery, cryptosporidium, and many other infectious diseases.

One hundred years ago, epidemics of these diseases helped limit the life expectancy of a U.S. citizen to about 50 years. Estimates vary for how many people sewage still sickens or kills each year, but they are all large.

Germs linger even after the stench of sewage has dispersed. Healthy adults may never realize that yesterday's swim caused today's cough, diarrhea, or ear infection. Young children, their grandparents, and people already weakened by illness are more likely to become seriously ill or die. Scientists believe as many as 3.5 million Americans get sick each year after swimming, boating, fishing, or otherwise touching water they thought was safe.

A 1998 study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology blamed water pollution for one-third of all reported gastroenteritis cases and two-thirds of all ear infections. It's not just the people who play in and around the water who are at risk. Between 1985 and 2000, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) documented 251 separate disease outbreaks and nearly half a million cases of waterborne illness from polluted drinking water in the United States. Another study by the CDC and the National Academy of Sciences concluded that most illnesses caused by eating tainted seafood have human sewage as the root cause.

Outdated treatment plants

To understand why this is happening, it's helpful to know some history. For centuries most American sewage poured into the nearest river or creek with little or no treatment, and few people gave it a second thought.

That changed when Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972 and the federal government began making significant investments to modernize sewage treatment infrastructure serving communities across the country.

Today, many of the plants built with that initial investment are undersized or are near the end of their effective lives.

There are 600,000 miles of sewer pipes across the country and the average age is 33 years. Some pipes in cities along the eastern seaboard are nearly 200 years old. Some are even made of wood. The American Society of Civil Engineers has given America's wastewater infrastructure a "D" grade overall.

Runaway development

Today, poorly planned development compounds the problem of aging infrastructure. As urban areas sprawl into the countryside, new expanses of concrete and asphalt increase the amount of stormwater surging into sewers - and the amount of pollution spewing out.

A single acre of wetlands can hold up to 1.5 million gallons of rain or melting snow. Otherwise it winds up in the sewer system.

Trees help keep water out of sewer systems, too. In fact, the group American Forests estimates that as Washington, D.C.'s tree canopy thinned by 43 percent between 1973 and 1997, the amount of stormwater running into the city's aging sewer system increased by 34 percent.
Older sewage systems combine stormwater with household sewage, but even in systems where they are separated some stormwater ends up in the sewer, where it contributes to raw sewage overflows.

Solutions

All people deserve clean water free of the many dangerous pollutants found in sewage. The only way to ensure this is to stop sewage overflows and leaks and ensure that no sewage is released into our streams, rivers, and lakes untreated. It will cost hundreds of billions of dollars and take decades to update the nation's wastewater infrastructure to this level.

But it isn't enough to simply invest more. Protecting and expanding natural areas helps prevent stormwater from rushing into the sewer in the first place - stopping sewer overflows before they start.

That's investing smarter.

In fact, planting trees, restoring wetlands, and creating green roofs are often the most cost-effective ways to expand the capacity of sewer systems.

A single mature tree with a thirty-foot crown can keep 4,600 gallons of water out of the sewer each year. For less than $300,000, it's possible to construct an artificial wetland that can intercept 3.25 million gallons of stormwater otherwise destined for the sewer.

In June 2003, Ford Motor Company planted ten acres of vegetation on the roof of its Dearborn, MI truck factory, keeping as many as four million gallons of rain out of the sewer system each year. Projects like these prevent sewage overflows as surely as bigger pipes - and cost less.

Until we make significant progress towards reducing sewage in our water, there must be strong notification programs that will alert people when there is a danger of contacting raw sewage. Wastewater facilities should be required to notify the media, citizens, and environmental agencies when they release untreated sewage into the environment. American Rivers works for federal and state right-to-know policies that require citizens to be informed of sewage contamination in their waterways. Not only will such programs keep people healthy by avoiding raw sewage, but it will also galvanize further support for solutions to reduce sewage pollution.

Clean water. It's essential. It's irreplaceable. If Americans today want our children and grandchildren to splash along the shore at sunset or drink from the faucet without worry, then it's time for us to act. It's time to make the commitment to keep raw sewage out of our water.

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How Sewage Pollution Ends Up In Rivers - American Rivers

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Where does human waste mingle with household chemicals, personal hygiene products, pharmaceuticals, and everything else that goes down the drains in American homes and businesses? In sewers. And what can you get when rain, pesticides, fertilizers, automotive chemicals, and trash run off the streets and down the gutters into those very same sewers?

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Water Pollution Solutions - a case study in success

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Water Pollution Solutions - a case study in success

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Into the Outdoors

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Water Pollution Solutions - a case study in success

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Decode how science, new ag practices and partnerships turned an impaired waterway into a trout stream

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Global water crisis: Facts, FAQs, and how to help

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Global water crisis: Facts, FAQs, and how to help

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World Vision

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There's nothing more essential to life on Earth than water. Yet, from Cape Town to Flint, Michigan, and from rural, sub-Saharan Africa to Asia's teeming megacities, there's a global water crisis. People are struggling to access the quantity and quality of water they need for drinking, cooking, bathing, handwashing, and growing their food.

Amazing progress has been made in making clean drinking water accessible to 2.6 billion people in developing countries from 1990 to 2015. That's an increase from 76% of the global population to 91% during that time. Yet there are still many opportunities to multiply the benefits of clean water through improved sanitation and hygiene education.

The United Nations recognizes the importance of addressing the global water crisis each year on World Water Day, March 22.

Globally, 844 million people lack access to clean water. Without clean, easily accessible water, families and communities are locked in poverty for generations. Children drop out of school and parents struggle to make a living.

Women and children are worst affected - children because they are more vulnerable to diseases of dirty water and women and girls because they often bear the burden of carrying water for their families for an estimated 200 million hours each day. Read the story of Ireen, an 8-year-old in Malawi who walks for water daily.

Access to clean water changes everything; it's a stepping-stone to development. When people gain access to clean water, they are better able to practice good hygiene and sanitation. Children enjoy good health and are more likely to attend school. Parents put aside their worries about water-related diseases and lack of access to clean water. Instead, they can water crops and livestock and diversify their incomes. Communities no longer vie for rights to a waterhole.

Every child deserves clean water.

FAQs: What you need to know about the global water crisis

Explore frequently asked questions about water, sanitation, and hygiene. Learn how you can help children and families who lack clean water.

Fast facts: Global water crisis

844 million people lack basic drinking water access, more than 1 of every 10 people on the planet.

Women and girls spend an estimated 200 million hours hauling water every day.

The average woman in rural Africa walks 6 kilometers every day to haul 40 pounds of water.

Every day, more than 800 children under age 5 die from diarrhea attributed to poor water and sanitation.

By 2050, at least 1 in 4 people will likely live in a country affected by chronic or recurring fresh-water shortages.

2.3 billion people live without access to basic sanitation.

892 million people practice open defecation.

One of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals aims to provide universal access to clean water and sanitation by 2030.

90% of all natural disasters are water-related.

BACK TO QUESTIONS
How can I help end the global water crisis?

You can help bring clean water to families in need as a supporter of World Vision. Over the last three years, we reached more than 12.7 million people with clean water. Our goals for the future are even more ambitious, but achievable, with your help.

Pray: Ask God to pour his blessings out on families in need of clean water.

Give: Help provide clean water for children and families.

Run or walk in the Global 6K for Water May 16, 2020 - right from your own home or neighborhood - to bring clean water to children around the world. You can also make a long-term commitment to join Team World Vision in the race to bring clean water and the opportunity for fullness of life to children around the world.

BACK TO QUESTIONS
What are the benefits of water, sanitation, and hygiene for children and families?

An investment in clean water, combined with basic sanitation and hygiene education, is one of the most effective ways to improve lives and fight extreme poverty. The benefits include:

Families become healthier: Water, sanitation, and hygiene programs work together to powerfully prevent the spread of most illnesses, and are one of the most effective ways to reduce child deaths.

Children are better nourished: Safe water, sanitation, and hygiene help kids grow taller, smarter, and stronger. They get more nutrition from the food they eat because they are not sick. Families are able to use water to irrigate gardens for more nutritious food year-round.

Children can attend and excel in school: When children don't have to walk long distances to get water, they have more time to attend school and more energy to learn. This is especially important for girls, who most often collect water for the family.

Family income improves: Families spend less money on healthcare and are better able pay for things like school supplies and fees. Water also is used for income-generating activities like making soap, bricks, and shea butter, as well as watering livestock and gardens.

BACK TO QUESTIONS
Why do you combine clean water with sanitation and hygiene? What is WASH?

Providing hygiene education and sanitation facilities, such as latrines and hand-washing stations, multiplies the health benefits of clean water by helping to reduce the spread of illness and disease. In fact, handwashing alone has been shown to result in children growing taller, stronger, and smarter. So intertwined are the issues of water, sanitation, and hygiene that they have been combined into one sector known in the global aid community as WASH.
BACK TO QUESTIONS
How are women and girls affected by lack of clean water?

Women and girls bear the greatest burden because in the developing world they are most likely to be responsible for hauling water to their homes. They spend an estimated 200 million hours collecting water every day. The average African woman walks 6 kilometers to haul 40 pounds of water each day. This daily grind saps her energy for other activities and robs her of the opportunity to spend this time with her family, or pursue school and income activities to improve their lives.

Girls who attend school until adolescence are more likely to drop out when they start menstruating unless their school has clean water, latrines, sanitary supplies, and hygiene training. Helping young women to manage menstrual health is not just about providing appropriate facilities, but also includes addressing social norms.

At childbirth, lack of sanitation, clean water, and proper hygiene contribute to high rates of disease and death among mothers and newborns in the developing world. World Vision is accelerating its push to bring clean water, latrines, and hand-washing facilities to more health clinics to assure safer deliveries.
BACK TO QUESTIONS
How much does it cost to bring clean water to one person?

Our average cost for World Vision to bring clean water to one person in Africa is $50. But this price actually includes much more than just clean water. It also includes the costs involved to ensure that a well or water point is maintained so it will last for generations. Also, by leveraging other resources, such as child sponsorship and local funds, each person who benefits from clean water is also trained and equipped to practice safe sanitation and hygiene.

For every $1 invested in clean water, the health benefits amount to $4.30.
BACK TO QUESTIONS
Milestones of the global water crisis

1700s to 1800s: Industrialization leads to increased urbanization in England, highlighting the need for clean water supplies and sanitation.

1800s: Water shortages first appear in historical records.

1854: Dr. John Snow discovers the link between water and the spread of cholera during an outbreak in London.

1866: In the United States, there are 136 public water systems; by the turn of the century, there are 3,000.

1900: Since 1900, more than 11 billion people have died from drought, and drought has affected more than 2 billion people.

1972: The U.S. Clean Water Act updates 1948 legislation to control water pollution and funds construction of sewage treatment plants.

1993: The U.N. General Assembly designates March 22 as World Water Day.

2000: The U.N. member states set Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for development progress, including a 2015 target to halve the number of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.

2003: UN-Water was founded as coordinating platform for issues of sanitation and fresh water access.

2005: About 35% of the global population experiences chronic water shortages, up from 9% in 1960.

2005 to 2015: U.N. member states prioritize water and sanitation development during International Decade for Action "Water for Life."

2008: The U.N.-recognized International Year of Sanitation prioritizes health and dignity.

2010: The MDGs clean water access target is achieved five years ahead of schedule. More than 2 billion people have gained access to safe drinking water since 1990. The U.N. General Assembly recognizes the right of each person to have adequate supplies of water for personal and domestic use that are physically accessible, equitably distributed, safe, and affordable.

2013: The U.N. designates Nov. 19 as World Toilet Day to highlight the global issue that billions of people still do not have access to proper sanitation.

2015: About 2.6 billion people have gained access to clean water in last 25 years, and about 1.4 billion gained basic access to sanitation since 2000. The U.N. member states sign on to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - successors to the MDGs, that promise clean water and sanitation for all by 2030.

2018: Worldwide, 2.1 billion people still live without safe drinking water in their homes and more than 892 million people still have no choice but to defecate outside.
BACK TO QUESTIONS
World Vision's water work

World Vision is the leading nongovernmental provider of clean drinking water in the developing world. We focus on bringing water to the extremely poor - including those with disabilities - in rural areas with the greatest disease burden. More than 700 World Vision water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) professionals and thousands of development professionals live and work in communities worldwide to co-create solutions that last.

World Vision's work results in water that continues to flow. We invest an average of 15 years in a community, cultivating local ownership and training locals to manage and maintain water points. An independent study by The Water Institute at the University of North Carolina, one of the premier academic groups in water research, examined 1,470 water sources in 520 communities located in the Greater Afram Plains region of Ghana. The report of their research, published in 2015, showed that nearly 80% of wells drilled by World Vision continued to function at high levels even after 20 years, thanks largely to our community engagement model.

World Vision believes we can solve the global water crisis within our lifetimes. Our efforts include:

Drilling, developing, and repairing wells and other vital water points

Teaching local community members how to keep water flowing

Overseeing the building of latrines and hand-washing facilities

Promoting healthy hygiene practices through education and behavior change programming.

Timeline of World Vision's water work

1960s: World Vision begins small water projects.

Early 1980s: Severe droughts in Africa focus the world's attention on the urgent need for clean, accessible water.

1985: World Vision begins water drilling projects in Ghana.

1990: World Vision increases its commitment to clean water, and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation partners in the Ghana water effort.

2000s: Scaling up water work

2003: West Africa Water Initiative extends drilling into Mali and Niger.

2005: West Africa's 2,000th well is drilled in Ghana.

2006: Large-scale water work begins in Ethiopia.

2009: Large-scale water work beings in Zambia, including sanitation and hygiene practices.

2011: World Vision begins intentional scale-up of water and sanitation activities in 10 countries in Africa. Numbers of clean water beneficiaries increase 20-fold when comparing 2010 to 2016.

2012: Drilling begins in Honduras.

2013: Drilling begins in India. World Vision and Procter & Gamble (P&G) celebrate a partnership that has provided 1 billion liters of purified water, hosting former President Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton to see the impact in Rwanda.

2014: University of North Carolina independent study reveals nearly 80% of World Vision wells in Ghana still function at high levels, even after 20 years. The 1,000th productive well is drilled in Mali. In December, the U.S. Congress passes Water for the World Act, prioritizing the provision of clean water and sanitation for the world's most vulnerable people. World Vision starts reaching one person every 30 seconds with clean water.

2015: Driven by a $40 million gift to its water programs by Dana and Dave Dornsife, World Vision announces in September plans to reach one new person with clean water every 10 seconds by 2020 - eventually achieving universal water access everywhere it works by 2030.

2016: World Vision expands its water, sanitation, and hygiene work into more countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, along with the Middle East, reaching 4.6 million new people with clean water.

2017: World Vision now reaches one new person every 10 seconds with clean water. In June, World Vision drills its 1,500th borehole well since 2003 in Mali.

2018 to 2030: World Vision sets ambitious goals for global water work

2020: 20 million new people served with clean water

2022: Clean water made available for everyone, everywhere we work in Rwanda.

2030: 50 million people - everyone, everywhere we work - have access to clean water and sanitation.

Learn more about World Vision's water work.
BACK TO QUESTIONS
What is World Vision's 2030 goal for its water programs? Is it achievable?

World Vision's goal is that by 2030 all communities located within our development areas worldwide will have access to clean water, adequate sanitation, hand-washing facilities, and menstrual hygiene facilities, as well as hygiene promotion and behavior change.

The global WASH program will specifically promote the inclusion of the most vulnerable men, women, and children. It will ensure that people with disabilities, those affected by HIV and AIDS, and other vulnerable groups in each area are actively included and benefit from hygiene messaging and increased access to sustainable safe water and improved sanitation.

We believe through partnering with local governments, communities, and other humanitarian organizations, collectively we can achieve this goal. In 2019, World Vision helped 3.3 million people achieve access to clean water and 2.5 million people with improved sanitation.
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Global water crisis: Facts, FAQs, and how to help | World Vision

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There's nothing more essential to life on Earth than water. Yet, from Cape Town to Flint, Michigan, and from rural, sub-Saharan Africa to Asia's teeming megacities, there's a global water crisis. People are struggling to access the quantity and quality of water they need for drinking, cooking, bathing, handwashing, and growing their food.

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The LifeStraw Personal Water Filter Review... - SafeShare.tv

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SafeShare.tv removes unwanted distractions from YouTube and Vimeo videos and reduces ads, so you can focus on the content. Perfect for schools and businesses!

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PODCAST: Solutions to the Global Water Crisis

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PODCAST: Solutions to the Global Water Crisis

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World Resources Institute

"Big Ideas Into Action" is the relaunched podcast from the World Resources Institute, bringing you the big ideas that combat the world's most pressing environmental and developmental challenges. You'll hear the voices of those meeting the challenges on the ground across the globe and find out about the way we're finding the answers and translating them into action. We'll be podcasting in series of six to eight at a time, once a week, with occasional special episodes to add our insights and analysis in response to big events. The World Resources Institute works around the globe to turn big ideas into action at the nexus of environment, economic opportunity, and human well-being. We focus on seven urgent global challenges that must be addressed to reduce poverty, grow economies and protect natural systems: climate change, energy, food, forests, water, cities, and the ocean.

WRI's Big Ideas Into Action podcast's tracks

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"Big Ideas Into Action" is the relaunched podcast from the World Resources Institute, bringing you the big ideas that combat the world's most pressing environmental and developmental challenges. You'll hear the voices of those meeting the challenges on the ground across the globe and find out about the way we're finding the answers and translating them into action.

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Jewell Parker Rhodes | 2016
Amazon

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The Main Causes of Water Pollution in the U.S.

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The Main Causes of Water Pollution in the U.S.

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Arcadia | 2017

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According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, 80 percent of marine pollution comes from land-based sources. The issue, however, is not limited to coastal environments; lakes, rivers, and water tables are affected on a large scale by pollution that comes from agriculture, industry, vehicle emissions, and products used at home every day. Runoff from soils and even pollutants in the air can settle in waterways, creating unsafe conditions for people and wildlife. Pollutants have many ways of making it into the water supply. Some of the most common sources and causes of water pollution in the nation are detailed below.

Runoff from Agricultural Operations

Agriculture represents one of the biggest sources of water pollution in the country. Industrial agriculture operations tend to release large amounts of water and waste from crop production and livestock, causing both water shortages and harmful pollution in nearby areas. The major causes of such pollution include:

Nutrients: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has cited nutrient pollution as one of the most problematic environmental issues. Nitrates are a common ingredient in fertilizer and can be seriously harmful to babies if present in drinking water. A U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) report in 2010 found that 64 percent of shallow wells studied in urban and agricultural areas had high nitrate levels. Excess nutrients can stunt aquatic plant growth and kill off fish. Such algal blooms can create dead zones as those seen in the Gulf of Mexico, which has been attributed to nitrogen fertilizer used in Mississippi River Basin croplands.

Animal waste: The waste products of livestock, along with chemicals used for farming, get washed away during rainstorms. Water borne diseases such as cholera, typhoid, and dysentery can end up in rivers and water supplies. About 500 million tons of manure are produced every year from animal feeding operations, which is triple the sewage that humans release into the environment, according to a United States Commission on Ocean Policy report.

Antibiotics/hormones: Both are commonly supplied to livestock, and subsequently excreted into the environment. Studies have found hormones remain active for months after excretion, traveling for miles downstream and affecting reproduction in fish. Antibiotics that make it into waterways can contribute to the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Heavy metals: Zinc and copper are often used to boost growth in cattle and poultry. Excreted in their waste, such metals and others including lead, chromium, and arsenic end up in soil fertilizer, which runs off into water sources. Heavy metal exposure can lead to kidney, nervous system, and cardiovascular problems.

Salts: Sodium, potassium, calcium, sulfate, bicarbonate, nitrate, and other salts in manure can make it into waterways, increasing salinity, altering ecosystems, and making drinking water unsafe.

Runoff and Nonpoint Source Pollution

Rain and melted snow moving above and through the ground take any pollutants with them. Runoff from farms, cities, suburban and rural homes, parking lots, and forests can contaminate waters far downstream. Chemicals to kill weeds on lawns and even road salt to melt ice on roads can end up in the water. Stormwater-related runoff can increase sediment in navigable waterways and pollute drinking supplies. In fact, according to the Commission on Ocean Policy, an inch of rain over a one-acre paved parking lot can produce 16 times more runoff than the same amount on a natural meadow the same size.

Industrial Activities

Industrial operations often drain waste into fresh water supplies. Toxic chemicals increase the number of minerals in, change the color of, and cause temperature changes in water. Pollutants such as mercury, asbestos, nitrates, and lead may be released. Major processes contributing to the problem include:

Mining: Crushing rock, extracting coal and minerals, and other activities release harmful chemicals and toxins, including sulfides from rocks and metal waste that mix with water.

Fossil fuel burning: Produces ash (with toxic chemicals) that mixes with water vapor, creating acid rain that eventually makes it to water sources.

Foundries: Metals and particulates can be emitted directly into the air and eventually find their way into bodies of water or the ground where they can run off.

Wastewater treatment: Industrial, commercial, and residential wastewater treatment is designed to remove most solids, pathogens, and organic materials. The effluent released into local waters isn't always free of bacteria, viruses, sediment, metals, and other pollutants as it should be.

Leakage from Underground Storage and Piping

Transporting coal and other industrial and petroleum products carries the risk of leaks in underground storage systems and pipes. Heavy use and corrosion can lead to spills. Accidental leakage can also occur during any part of the transportation process, leading to soil and water pollution.

Leaking Sewers

Sewer system overflows are major point sources of water pollution. If a sewer overflows, its contents can enter waters before it is treated. There are 40,000 sewer overflows per year, the EPA has estimated. The discharge can go directly into oceans, rivers, and estuaries, affecting human health, shell fishing, and causing beach closures. Improperly managed septic systems present pollution problems as well for coastal areas.

Vehicle Emissions

Atmospheric emissions from motor vehicles can settle or make their way to surface and ground water through rain. Oil left behind by a parked car can run off. Visible as a colorful sheen in puddles, automotive oil can become a nonpoint source pollutant that drains into streams, lakes, rivers, and oceans.

Landfill Leakage

If a protective bottom layer is missing or damaged, contaminants can leak into groundwater. The Groundwater Foundation reveals landfills as a source of household cleaners, battery acid, and other compounds that can lead to water pollution

Hazardous Waste

There are more than 20,000 uncontrolled hazardous waste sites in the nation, according to the USGS. Barrels and containers may leak as they age. Leaking contaminants can eventually make it into the groundwater through cracks in concrete floors and other barriers.

Radioactive Sources

Leaks from nuclear power plants into water doesn't only happen in Japan or Russia. Indian Point nuclear power plant on New York's Hudson River sometimes releases radioactive water that is considered to have permissible levels of contamination, per government regulations ( Riverkeeper.org). Over 100 different isotopes are released into the water and air in small amounts, including Iodine-131, Strontium-89, and Strontium-90. These can make it into water and the food chain, as pollutants from agriculture, industry, runoff, vehicles, sewers, and other sources do throughout the U.S.
Join the clean energy movement and keep our valuable sources of water clean! Sign up for a free or premium energy plan and source clean energy for your home.

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The Main Causes of Water Pollution in the U.S.

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According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, 80 percent of marine pollution comes from land-based sources. The issue, however, is not limited to coastal environments; lakes, rivers, and water tables are affected on a large scale by pollution that comes from agriculture, industry, vehicle emissions, and products used at home every day.

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Top Water Conservation Methods | The 71 Percent

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Water is an integral part of everyday life - it sustains us. Indiana American Water is committed to sustainability and water conservation.

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Circle of Blue

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Weekly and special podcasts from Circle of Blue, highlighting the competition between water, food, and energy.

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FLOW - Official Theatrical Trailer... - SafeShare.tv

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SafeShare.tv removes unwanted distractions from YouTube and Vimeo videos and reduces ads, so you can focus on the content. Perfect for schools and businesses!

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2008

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Save

Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century - The World Water Crisis.

Salina builds a case against the growing privatization of the world's dwindling fresh water supply with an unflinching focus on politics, pollution, human rights, and the emergence of a domineering world water cartel. Interviews with scientists and activists intelligently reveal the rapidly building crisis, at both the global and human scale, and the film introduces many of the governmental and corporate culprits behind the water grab, while begging the question "CAN ANYONE REALLY OWN WATER?" Beyond identifying the problem, FLOW also gives viewers a look at the people and institutions providing practical solutions to the water crisis and those developing new technologies, which are fast becoming blueprints for a successful global and economic turnaround.

Watch on Amazon.

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Save Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century - The World Water Crisis. Salina builds a case against the growing privatization of the world's dwindling fresh water supply with an unflinching focus on politics, pollution, human rights, and the emergence of a domineering world water cartel.

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Claudia Davila | 2012
Amazon

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World Health Orginization

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Introduction

Safe and readily available water is important for public health, whether it is used for drinking, domestic use, food production or recreational purposes. Improved water supply and sanitation, and better management of water resources, can boost countries' economic growth and can contribute greatly to poverty reduction.

In 2010, the UN General Assembly explicitly recognized the human right to water and sanitation. Everyone has the right to sufficient, continuous, safe, acceptable, physically accessible, and affordable water for personal and domestic use.

Drinking water services

Sustainable Development Goal target 6.1 calls for universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water. The target is tracked with the indicator of "safely managed drinking water services" - drinking water from an improved water source that is located on premises, available when needed, and free from faecal and priority chemical contamination.

In 2017, 5.3 billion people used safely managed drinking-water services - that is, they used improved water sources located on premises, available when needed, and free from contamination. The remaining 2.2 billion people without safely managed services in 2017 included:

1.4 billion people with basic services, meaning an improved water source located within a round trip of 30 minutes

206 million people with limited services, or an improved water source requiring more than 30 minutes to collect water

435 million people taking water from unprotected wells and springs

144 million people collecting untreated surface water from lakes, ponds, rivers and streams.

Sharp geographic, sociocultural and economic inequalities persist, not only between rural and urban areas but also in towns and cities where people living in low-income, informal, or illegal settlements usually have less access to improved sources of drinking-water than other residents.

Water and health

Contaminated water and poor sanitation are linked to transmission of diseases such as cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid, and polio. Absent, inadequate, or inappropriately managed water and sanitation services expose individuals to preventable health risks. This is particularly the case in health care facilities where both patients and staff are placed at additional risk of infection and disease when water, sanitation, and hygiene services are lacking. Globally, 15% of patients develop an infection during a hospital stay, with the proportion much greater in low-income countries.

Inadequate management of urban, industrial, and agricultural wastewater means the drinking-water of hundreds of millions of people is dangerously contaminated or chemically polluted.

Some 829 000 people are estimated to die each year from diarrhoea as a result of unsafe drinking-water, sanitation, and hand hygiene. Yet diarrhoea is largely preventable, and the deaths of 297 000 children aged under 5 years could be avoided each year if these risk factors were addressed. Where water is not readily available, people may decide handwashing is not a priority, thereby adding to the likelihood of diarrhoea and other diseases.

Diarrhoea is the most widely known disease linked to contaminated food and water but there are other hazards. In 2017, over 220 million people required preventative treatment for schistosomiasis - an acute and chronic disease caused by parasitic worms contracted through exposure to infested water.

In many parts of the world, insects that live or breed in water carry and transmit diseases such as dengue fever. Some of these insects, known as vectors, breed in clean, rather than dirty water, and household drinking water containers can serve as breeding grounds. The simple intervention of covering water storage containers can reduce vector breeding and may also reduce faecal contamination of water at the household level.

Economic and social effects

When water comes from improved and more accessible sources, people spend less time and effort physically collecting it, meaning they can be productive in other ways. This can also result in greater personal safety by reducing the need to make long or risky journeys to collect water. Better water sources also mean less expenditure on health, as people are less likely to fall ill and incur medical costs, and are better able to remain economically productive.

With children particularly at risk from water-related diseases, access to improved sources of water can result in better health, and therefore better school attendance, with positive longer-term consequences for their lives.

Challenges

Climate change, increasing water scarcity, population growth, demographic changes and urbanization already pose challenges for water supply systems. By 2025, half of the world's population will be living in water-stressed areas. Re-use of wastewater, to recover water, nutrients, or energy, is becoming an important strategy. Increasingly countries are using wastewater for irrigation - in developing countries this represents 7% of irrigated land. While this practice if done inappropriately poses health risks, safe management of wastewater can yield multiple benefits, including increased food production.

Options for water sources used for drinking water and irrigation will continue to evolve, with an increasing reliance on groundwater and alternative sources, including wastewater. Climate change will lead to greater fluctuations in harvested rainwater. Management of all water resources will need to be improved to ensure provision and quality.

WHO's response

As the international authority on public health and water quality, WHO leads global efforts to prevent transmission of waterborne disease, advising governments on the development of health-based targets and regulations.

WHO produces a series of water quality guidelines, including on drinking-water, safe use of wastewater, and safe recreational water environments. The water quality guidelines are based on managing risks, and since 2004 the Guidelines for drinking-water quality promote the Framework for Safe Drinking-water. The Framework recommends establishment of health-based targets, the development and implementation of Water Safety Plans by water suppliers to most effectively identify and manage risks from catchment to consumer, and independent surveillance to ensure that Water Safety Plans are effective and health-based targets are being met.

WHO also supports countries to implement the drinking-water quality guidelines through the development of practical guidance materials and provision of direct country support. This includes the development of locally relevant drinking-water quality regulations aligned to the principles in the Guidelines, the development, implementation and auditing of Water Safety Plans and strengthening of surveillance practices.

Since 2014, WHO has been testing household water treatment products against WHO health-based performance criteria through the WHO International 'Scheme' to Evaluate Household Water Treatment Technologies. The aim of the scheme is to ensure that products protect users from the pathogens that cause diarrhoeal disease and to strengthen policy, regulatory, and monitoring mechanisms at the national level to support appropriate targeting and consistent and correct use of such products.

WHO works closely with UNICEF in a number of areas concerning water and health, including on water, sanitation, and hygiene in health care facilities. In 2015 the two agencies jointly developed WASH FIT (Water and Sanitation for Health Facility Improvement Tool), an adaptation of the water safety plan approach. WASH FIT aims to guide small, primary health care facilities in low- and middle-income settings through a continuous cycle of improvement through assessments, prioritization of risk, and definition of specific, targeted actions. A 2019 report describes practical steps that countries can take to improve water, sanitation and hygiene in health care facilities.

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Safe and readily available water is important for public health, whether it is used for drinking, domestic use, food production or recreational purposes. Improved water supply and sanitation, and better management of water resources, can boost countries' economic growth and can contribute greatly to poverty reduction.

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Chemicals migrate into water from old pipes, industry, agriculture, and other sources. Many have no taste, color, or smell. Authorities test at some facilities but they don't know what's coming out of your tap.

Tap Score is the only home water testing service with unbiased treatment matching and health risk analysis - so you don't waste money on treatment that doesn't do what you need.

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Independent Lab Water Testing For Home And Business

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Chemicals migrate into water from old pipes, industry, agriculture, and other sources. Many have no taste, color, or smell. Authorities test at some facilities but they don't know what's coming out of your tap. Tap Score is the only home water testing service with unbiased treatment matching and health risk analysis - so you don't waste money on treatment that doesn't do what you need.

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See the Fresh Water challenge in the Earth Day Ecochallenge Event

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Water is key to life. About 97% of the planet's water is in the ocean, and less than one percent is freshwater (the remainder is stored in glaciers and polar ice). Throughout our existence, the availability of fresh, clean water has determined the success or failure of the human experiment.

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BBC

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Every drop of rainwater is collected from roofs, where it drains into a tank and is then pumped towards taps when it's needed.

The solution is logical and simple. Bermuda's only source of natural water is rain and so every drop of rainwater is collected from roofs, where it drains into a tank and is then pumped towards taps when it's needed.

1.2 billion people live in areas where water is scarce and experience water shortages. Could Bermuda's harvesting system work elsewhere?

Find more innovative ideas from the first series go to www.bbcworldservice.com/perfectcountry

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BBC World Service - The Documentary Podcast, Solving Water Scarcity - Bermuda, My Perfect Country Boxset

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Every drop of rainwater is collected from roofs, where it drains into a tank and is then pumped towards taps when it's needed. The solution is logical and simple. Bermuda's only source of natural water is rain and so every drop of rainwater is collected from roofs, where it drains into a tank and is then pumped towards taps when it's needed.

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Coal Ash in North Carolina | Youth & Climate

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2009

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Crude (The Story of Chevron - Texaco's Ecuador Disaster) 2009, Joe Berlinger

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Poisoned Water: How the Citizens of Flint, Michigan, Fought for Their Lives and Warned the Nation

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Poisoned Water: How the Citizens of Flint, Michigan, Fought for Their Lives and Warned the Nation

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Candy J Cooper | 2020
Amazon

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Two-thirds of Earth’s land is on pace to lose water as the climate warms – that’s a problem for people, crops and forests

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Two-thirds of Earth’s land is on pace to lose water as the climate warms – that’s a problem for people, crops and forests

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The Conversation | 2021

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The world watched with a sense of dread in 2018 as Cape Town, South Africa, counted down the days until the city would run out of water. The region's surface reservoirs were going dry amid its worst drought on record, and the public countdown was a plea for help.

By drastically cutting their water use, Cape Town residents and farmers were able to push back "Day Zero" until the rain came, but the close call showed just how precarious water security can be. California also faced severe water restrictions during its recent multiyear drought. And Mexico City is now facing water restrictions after a year with little rain.

There are growing concerns that many regions of the world will face water crises like these in the coming decades as rising temperatures exacerbate drought conditions.

Understanding the risks ahead requires looking at the entire landscape of terrestrial water storage - not just the rivers, but also the water stored in soils, groundwater, snowpack, forest canopies, wetlands, lakes and reservoirs.

We study changes in the terrestrial water cycle as engineers and hydrologists. In a new study published Jan. 11, we and a team of colleagues from universities and institutes around the world showed for the first time how climate change will likely affect water availability on land from all water storage sources over the course of this century.

We found that the sum of this terrestrial water storage is on pace to decline across two-thirds of the land on the planet. The worst impacts will be in areas of the Southern Hemisphere where water scarcity is already threatening food security and leading to human migration and conflict. Globally, one in 12 people could face extreme drought related to water storage every year by the end of this century, compared to an average of about one in 33 at the end of the 20th century.

These findings have implications for water availability, not only for human needs, but also for trees, plants and the sustainability of agriculture.

Where the risks are highest

The water that keeps land healthy, crops growing and human needs met comes from a variety of sources. Mountain snow and rainfall feed streams that affect community water supplies. Soil water content directly affects plant growth. Groundwater resources are crucial for both drinking water supplies and crop productivity in irrigated regions.

While studies often focus just on river flow as an indicator of water availability and drought, our study instead provides a holistic picture of the changes in total water available on land. That allows us to capture nuances, such as the ability of forests to draw water from deep groundwater sources during years when the upper soil levels are drier.

The declines we found in land water storage are especially alarming in the Amazon River basin, Australia, southern Africa, the Mediterranean region and parts of the United States. In these regions, precipitation is expected to decline sharply with climate change, and rising temperatures will increase evaporation. At the same time, some other regions will become wetter, a process already seen today.

Yadu Pokhrel, et al, Nature Climate Change, 2021, CC BY-ND

Our findings for the Amazon basin add to the longstanding debate over the fate of the rainforest in a warmer world. Many studies using climate model projections have warned of widespread forest die-off in the future as less rainfall and warmer temperatures lead to higher heat and moisture stress combined with forest fires.

In an earlier study, we found that the deep-rooted rainforests may be more resilient to short-term drought than they appear because they can tap water stored in soils deeper in the ground that aren't considered in typical climate model projections. However, our new findings, using multiple models, indicate that the declines in total water storage, including deep groundwater stores, may lead to more water shortages during dry seasons when trees need stored water the most and exacerbate future droughts. All weaken the resilience of the rainforests.

[ Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation's newsletter.]

A new way of looking at drought

Our study also provides a new perspective on future droughts.

There are different kinds of droughts. Meteorological droughts are caused by lack of precipitation. Agricultural droughts are caused by lack of water in soils. Hydrological droughts involve lack of water in rivers and groundwater. We provided a new perspective on droughts by looking at the total water storage.

U.K. Met Office

We found that moderate to severe droughts involving water storage would increase until the middle of the 21st century and then remain stable under future scenarios in which countries cut their emissions, but extreme to exceptional water storage droughts could continue to increase until the end of the century.

That would further threaten water availability in regions where water storage is projected to decline.

Changes driven by global warming

These declines in water storage and increases in future droughts are primarily driven by climate change, not land-water management activities such as irrigation and groundwater pumping. This became clear when we examined simulations of what the future would look like if climate conditions were unchanged from preindustrial times. Without the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, terrestrial water storage would remain generally stable in most regions.

If future increases in groundwater use for irrigation and other needs are also considered, the projected reduction in water storage and increase in drought could be even more severe.

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Two-thirds of Earth's land is on pace to lose water as the climate warms - that's a problem for people, crops and forests

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The world watched with a sense of dread in 2018 as Cape Town, South Africa, counted down the days until the city would run out of water. The region's surface reservoirs were going dry amid its worst drought on record, and the public countdown was a plea for help.

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Meet the Hydropanel, a powerful piece of technology that provides clean, mineralized water for your sustainable drinking water needs