no more water?

i was forwarded this article related to a water crisis. Few things come to mind...

in my circle of geeky water treatment engineers, we have been talking about things like this for years. particularly the bit about transferring water between watersheds. it's a gigantic problem. i'll attempt to describe this clearly. the water we drink comes from basically either groundwater (wells) or surface water (reservoirs). the large majority of water we discharge goes to rivers with a small percentage going to groundwater recharge. the problem with this is complex, but we are essentially transferring non-saline water to sources that ultimately discharge to the oceans; thereby contaminating our fresh water supply. this is particularly true for coastal resources. the problem with this is that it is exponentially more expensive to treat saline water than fresh water. this is due to the energy requirements required to physically separate the salt molecule from the water molecule. we, together with water purveyors and treatment authorities need to come up with a way to take better care of protecting our fresh water. reuse comes to mind, tertiary wastewater treatment plants that convert wastewater to drinking water. unfortunately, this isn't very accepted among the masses and is generally referred to as "toilet to tap." i guarentee, it's a lot cheaper than desalination.

conserve.

Things you don't hear every day...

there are just some things that you don't hear every day. Things like - "wow, great job!" or "Happy Birthday!" But there is something that I never thought I would hear someone say to me...

"You have won a trip to Malawi"

Aside from the pure stun that I won something, a trip, my first words were "Great! Umm.. where exactly is Malawi?"

It wasn't totally out of the blue. A few months ago, I was helping a campaign for Water for People through work. Water for People is a great organization that helps people in developing countries by supporting the locally sustainable sanitary water supplies. My work published a contest through on-line donations and one person was going to get chosen to go on a Water for People country tour. I made my donation, as I did in years past, and briefly (for about 3 seconds) wondered what it would be like to go on a tour of these facilities. I quickly dismissed the idea, I never win anything. Well, I can't say that anymore and I'm sincerely looking forward to the opportunity to see how clean drinking water can change a person's life.

~me