What hope do we have about the water?

The basic resource for the life on Earth faces many problems as the humankind progresses. The most worrying one is, maybe, that it won't be available for everybody.

 

Based upon an original copy by Kathy García.

 

    The history of humankind is linked to the way how it domesticated the water, 5000 years ago when the first settlements appeared at Indush Valley, actual India, where they built pipes for having it and canals for wasting it. Athens, Greece. Pompeii, actual Italy. Cusco, Peru. They also had intrincated water & wreckage systems.

 

The political power of these cities was connected to the water supply, what led to build huge works that allowed them to gather it, to carry it from remote locations, to store it, and to distribute it. Canals and waterways have born so, and apparently they got to satisfy their demand so.

 

The wáter was mostly used for agriculture and the supply depended on the existence of rains and rivers. The consumption rose during the Industrial Revolution in 19^th and 20^th centuries, what implied to make larger engineering works to allow a bigger storage, protection, and ffloods prevention. In the same way, the load for the hydroelectric plants and the irrigations was guaranteed.

 

The another great revolution was the wreckage services that allowed to control infectous diseases like cholera or typhoid. As a fact, Peru suffered from a cholera epidemic in 1991 as well as other nations in Latin America. The bad water quality or the poor availability triggered the infections.

 

United Nations estimates that 2.1 billion (of more than 7.5 billion) of people around the world do not have access to  running water. Beginning this century, Lima City had 2 million (of 7 million, then)of people without access to running water & wreckage. The allegation that the liquid was not safe because of industrial contaminants has been constant.

 

Current situation

The lack or the shortage of running water & wreckage at the poorest sectors of our cities continue to be a top story. Some leaders assure that there are privatization plans for the service but the operators have denied it. Even some countries have added into their constitutions that “the water is a human right.” The Peruvian Law considers it “a public use’s good,, in other words, universal access and using if it is inside the national territory.

 

In Peru, the running water & wreckage service is administered by companies owned by the municipal governments, meanwhile the National Authority of Water was created nationwide to manage better the resource independently the purposes it has. Despite, there are problems due to the climate change, the operation cost, the debts generated by the users, and a public bureaucracy that slows ddown to take good decisions.

 

Another external problem that impacts directly is the industrial contamination. There are already penalties but the companies use legal tricks to elude its application or to enlarge the lawsuits. Beginning this century, the U.S. Department of Commerce stated the water & wreckage raised 100-billion-dollar gains in that country, five more times worldwide. About 115,000 companies and organizations fought a target around the planet.

 

    Technological advance

Between 1980 and 2000, the wáter consumption in the United States fell down about 35%. In Japan, around 1965, it used about 13 million gallons of water, what means 1-million-dollar incomes. 25 years later, it only spent 3.5 million gallons after applying a conservation policy based on technology.

 

In Peru, the universities have presented many proposals to use the water in a more efficient way. Beginning this century, the gathering & operation costs of running water have reduced notoriously because of filtration membranes, advanced oxygenation, located reparation and renovation of pipelines and its re-alignment, as well as the smart monitoring. If the water consumption measuring automathized, it would make a big difference.

 

Despite that, it is estimated that 25% to 30% of who consume water nationwide don’t pay for it while millions miss the resource. Another part loses in old and useless pipelines, or these ones without an adequate maintenance. In spite of advances, there are still water loses because of those causes instead of payroll.

 

The good news is the rational use of water is already a learning and discussion topic at the schools, what can lead to effective affirmative actions. When Mexico City renewed 350,000 damaged WC’s, it could supply water to 250,000 people, a little bit more than 1% of that metro area’s population. In the United States, the water of the most important rivers is used and re-used until 20 times before leading it to the sea. In Peru, we don’t achieve to implement those programmes successfully yet.

 

As much as we continue to educate on the rational use of water, and we know how it generates to conserve from its nascents, and we act like an awared citizenship for avoiding the game rules to change (as much as they are harmful), there is hope for the so-called liquid element. In a decade and a half, this recipe has stopped this vital good turns into a merchandise reserved to an elite.

 

Condensed and adapted by FACTORTIERRA.