(New Beginnings, No. 10)
Published as Peter McCarthy.
‘World demand for water doubles every 21 years, but the volume available is the same as it was in Roman times. Something has got to give. Water will be the progenitor of more wars than oil.’ (Crispin Tickell, former British ambassador to the UN). And the late King Hussein of Jordan said that only a dispute over water could break the newly-established peace between his country and Israel.
Water is precious. Agriculture needs more of it to meet the needs of the increase of 1,500,000 people per week in the world’s population. But increased water use threatens ecological systems on which the world depends.
Just think of it: only 3% of all water on earth is fresh and available for human use; the rest is salty. Water is a resource which we received from the previous generation and which we use and hand on to the next. If we leave that resource better than we found it, we would be acting responsibly towards the human family. One way of doing this is to use water as if our drinking water intake pipe was downstream from where we live, drawing in whatever we dump in the river.
In Ireland, the Environmental Protection Agency, in its Millennium Report, said that 42% of group water schemes, and 7% of local authority schemes, do not meet national drinking water standards. The cost of bringing our water treatment facilities up-to-date is estimated at £190 million. Yet there are people who expect to get water free! Oil and natural gas come to us from nature also but we don’t get them for nothing. Why water?
The average Irish person uses 142 litres of drinking quality water each day. Much of this is flushed down the toilet (9 litres a time), while less than 10% (13.5 litres) is used for drinking and cooking. The average dishwasher uses 50 litres and a washing machine 100 litres. A bath takes 80 litres, a shower 30. A garden sprinkler uses over 900 litres of water an hour. And it is estimated that 36% of Dublin’s drinking water supply is lost through leakage in the pipes.
What can an ordinary householder do to limit the quantity of water used?
- put a brick in the toilet cistern.
- don’t leave the tap running while washing your teeth or hands.
- take showers rather than baths.
- don’t use the dishwasher or washing machine unless it has a full load.
- put a barrel under the drainpipes and use the water collected for washing the car or sprinkling the garden.
What can an ordinary householder do to limit damage to the quality of water?
- don’t pour chemicals down the sink.
- use compost in the garden instead of chemical fertilizer.
- use phosphate-free detergents. Read the label on the package.
- use household cleaners that are free from chlorine. Read the label on the package.
- if you use a septic tank, make sure that it is properly sited and serviced.
Remember what happens to water after you’ve used it. It goes to an (often inadequate) treatment plant before being discharged into a river or lake, where it may be re-cycled to become drinking water again.