Hello Christopher >MH wrote: > > > Whats the solution ? > > Can we make more water ? > >The single most useful step at the present time would be to prevent >water pollution in the first place. Removal of pollutants after their >dispersion is highly impractical. If we stop adding ever greater >quantities of pollutants to the water, most of the pollutants already >there will eventually disperse or break down to the point where they are >not a serious direct threat to life. In some locales, the absolute lack >of water is a serious problem; in many others there is water but it will >make you sick if you drink it. Cessation of new pollution and sufficient >time (anywhere from a few years to decades) will usually mitigate the >latter problem.
You're quite right, but pollution is only one aspect of a multi-faceted problem. Very important aspect, but so are they all. >If there is an absolute lack of water in some region, the problem is far >more complex. Through great effort it may be possible to alter the >climate in a particular locale to reverse desertification; there seems >to be some evidence that this is working in parts of the Middle East and >China. > >People everywhere need to learn more about proper stewardship of ground >water. It is easy to screw up the ground water through improper drilling >of wells, unintelligent farming and livestock raising, and improper >disposal of human excreta. If ground water is all you've got and you >screw it up, you're really screwed! "... the relentless search for secure water supplies to feed the insatiable appetites of the water-bottling corporations [22.3 billion U.S. gallons in 2000] is having damaging effects. In rural communities throughout much of the world, the industry has been buying up farmland to access wells and then moving on when the wells are depleted. In Uruguay and other parts of Latin America, foreign-based water corporations have been buying up vast wilderness tracts and even whole water systems to hold for future development. In some cases, these companies end up draining the water system of the entire area, not just the water on their land tracts." http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5973 Debunking The Myths Of Bottled Water - An Excerpt From "Blue Gold" by Maude Barlow Great, eh? >In some places there doesn't seem to be much of a solution but to reduce >the population living there. That eventually happens but often times it >ain't pretty. > >Desalinization holds great potential but it is very energy intensive. > >Many people could make better use of rainwater that falls on their own >roofs. It's a lot like oil. Nobody talks (yet!) about a Hubbert's Peak for water, though it strikes me it's a lot more relevant. Less use, better use, and, what you can't do with oil, conservation. Well, with oil that means not using it. Not so with water. I was talking to a Japanese farmer, not about water, but it came up - I had water-conservative SRI rice-growing in mind. He said: "But there's no water shortage in Japan." That's right. There's no overall water shortage in many places where there's a water crisis. What they have instead is an increasingly vicious cycle of droughts and floods. This was written a long time ago (60 years), but it's still largely true: "Japan provides perhaps the best example of the control of soil erosion in a country with torrential rains, highly erodible soils, and a topography which renders the retention of the soil on steep slopes very difficult. Here erosion has been effectively held in check, by methods adopted regardless of cost, for the reason that the alternative to their execution would be national disaster. The great danger from soil erosion in Japan is the deposition of soil debris from the steep mountain slopes on the rice-fields below. The texture of the rice soils must be maintained so that the fields will hold water and allow of the minimum of through drainage. If such areas became covered with a deep layer of permeable soil, brought down by erosion from the hillsides, they would no longer hold water, and rice cultivation -- the mainstay of Japan's food-supply -- would be out of the question. For this reason the country has spent as much as ten times the capital value of eroding land on soil conservation work, mainly as an insurance for saving the valuable rice lands below. Thus in 1925 the Tokyo Forestry Board spent 453 yen (£45) per acre in anti-erosion measures on a forest area, valued at 40 yen per acre, in order to save rice-fields lower down valued at 240 to 300 yen per acre. "The dangers from erosion have been recognized in Japan for centuries and an exemplary technique has been developed for preventing them. It is now a definite part of national policy to maintain the upper regions of each catchment area under forest, as the most economical and effective method of controlling flood waters and insuring the production of rice in the valleys. For many years erosion control measures have formed an important item in the national budget. "According to Lowdermilk, erosion control in Japan is like a game of chess. The forest engineer, after studying his eroding valley, makes his first move, locating and building one or more check dams. He waits to see what Nature's response is. This determines the forest engineer's next move, which may be another dam or two, an increase in the former dam, or the construction of side retaining walls. After another pause for observation, the next move is made and so on until erosion is checkmated. The operation of natural forces, such as sedimentation and re-vegetation, are guided and used to the best advantage to keep down costs and to obtain practical results. No more is attempted than Nature has already done in the region. By 1919 nearly 2,000,000 hectares of protection forests were used in erosion control. These forest areas do more than control erosion. They help the soil to absorb and retain large volumes of rain-water and to release it slowly to the rivers and springs. "China, on the other hand, presents a very striking example of the evils which result from the inability of the administration to deal with the whole of a great drainage unit. On the slopes of the upper reaches of the Yellow River extensive soil erosion is constantly going on. Every year the river transports over 2,000 million tons of soil, sufficient to raise an area of 400 square miles by 5 feet. This is provided by the easily erodible loess soils of the upper reaches of the catchment area. The mud is deposited in the river bed lower down so that the embankments which contain the stream have constantly to be raised. Periodically the great river wins in this unequal contest and destructive inundations result. The labour expended on the embankments is lost because the nature of the erosion problem as a whole has not been grasped, and the area drained by the Yellow River has not been studied and dealt with as a single organism. The difficulty now is the over-population of the upper reaches of the catchment area, which prevents afforestation and laying down to grass. Had the Chinese maintained effective control of the upper reaches -- the real cause of the trouble -- the erosion problem in all probability would have been solved long ago at a lesser cost in labour than that which has been devoted to the embankment of the river." - From "An Agricultural Testament" by Sir Albert Howard, Chapter 10. Some Diseases of the Soil - Soil Erosion: http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/howardAT/AT10.html Japan certainly does maintain destructive forestry practices, as with the 130 million pairs of wooden chopsticks the Japanese waste every day - but those come from other people's forests, not their own. Water problems? Look up at the hills - no trees on the slopes, for sure. Solutions? NOT this way: "... since the city's water services were sold off to French-based multinational Suez (formerly Suez Lyonnaise) the bills have tripled and many people can no longer afford to keep the water flowing. Instead, they are drinking untreated river water, making it hardly surprising that in February 2001, Alexandra fell victim to a cholera outbreak which claimed four lives. The government's response? - Start evicting the squatters. In an ironic shift, former anti-apartheid activists in Alexandra and Soweto have turned to resisting water privatisation as the new threat to life and dignity." http://www.corporatewatch.org/news/white_gold.htm White Gold July 9th 2002 That's in Johannesburg. The water actually comes from Lesotho: "The dams are not good news for the people of the Lestho highlands. Much of Lesotho's economy is based on subsistence farming, but the dams have flooded valuable agricultural land in the river valleys - the Katse Dam alone displaced several thousand people, most of whom ended up moving to the slums of the capital city, Maseru, or to villages further up the mountains where there is no spare land for them and, ironically, often no water supply. People who were formerly self-sufficient farmers are supposed to be compensated by food handouts. Lesotho is currently on the brink of famine, like much of southern Africa, and has begun soliciting food aid - a fact perhaps not wholly unconnected to the flooding of farmlandÉ Meanwhile, a study of the rivers downstream of the dam shows severe pollution, death of fish and vegetation and increased spread of human and animal diseases - all a result of decreased water flow." Same story everywhere this happens. This way works: "Promoting Local Water Management in Nepal", IDRC Reports. January 23, 1998 -- In the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal, the land of the world's tallest mountains, smaller may be better. At least, that's what two engineers believe when it comes to water management. "We've got to get rid of the fixation in our part of the world that water means projects, and projects means large projects," says Dipak Gyawali of the Nepal Water Conservation Foundation (NWCF). Gyawali and his partner, Ajaya Dixit, see themselves as myth-busters with a mission: to convince the government to examine all of the options for wise water management before embarking on costly high risk, large projects. Among the myths they are determined to bust: that Nepal is rich in water; that a heavy annual rainfall means a good water supply; that large water projects are beneficial and create jobs; and that textbook water engineering -- involving the construction of dams and embankments -- is always the best option for Nepal. They say existing studies show that mega-projects are more politically motivated than practical, and tend to promise more than they deliver in terms of jobs, irrigation potential, and flood control. Instead, the pair favours locally based alternatives, such as less expensive mini-reservoirs, which retain water and help fight erosion, or small water-driven turbines to power homes and local industries. http://www.idrc.ca/reports/read_article_english.cfm?article_num=180 There's abundant evidence for that from all round the world, no matter how little notice the World Bank and the usual suspects feel like taking. Same with afforestation - let the local people do it and keep the big guys OUT. If you want trees, that is, rather than resources and a cash-flow to pillage. Same with biofuels too - local-level, micro-regional, and sod the big guys, they're no use. >Just a few ideas. Good ideas. Best Keith >Christopher Witmer >Tokyo Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! 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