This is a great article about the correlation of water and poverty.
humanosphere.org/
Showing posts with label Water Audit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Water Audit. Show all posts
Monday, August 24, 2015
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Community Well Water Analysis in Santo Domingo Barrio Bajo Etla
From Nelly Fernandez Tellez Water for Humans-- Mexico Operations
On 25 April, I paid a visit to the community of Santo Domingo Barrio Bajo Etla.
I was there to obtain a copy of the results from annual analysis of community well water conducted last year, and to talk with the manager of the water committee.
Initial results show the water is fairly good quality, however the well pump failed last year and the new replacement pump is starting to show some corrosion. Currently, the municipality does not have the funds to perform new water analysis, and they have asked Water for Humans to help them determine the root cause of the pump failure and better understand the water quality.
In response we are invigorating the costs of performing a more complete water analysis, and forecasting the funding requirements to support this request.
On 25 April, I paid a visit to the community of Santo Domingo Barrio Bajo Etla.
I was there to obtain a copy of the results from annual analysis of community well water conducted last year, and to talk with the manager of the water committee.
Initial results show the water is fairly good quality, however the well pump failed last year and the new replacement pump is starting to show some corrosion. Currently, the municipality does not have the funds to perform new water analysis, and they have asked Water for Humans to help them determine the root cause of the pump failure and better understand the water quality.
In response we are invigorating the costs of performing a more complete water analysis, and forecasting the funding requirements to support this request.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Robert Glennon keynote speaker at Chief Sealth International High School’s World Water Week Event
www.westseattleherald.com
Robert Glennon, author of NYT bestseller “Unquenchable” and a U. of Arizona Professor of Law and Public Policy, will be among the featured speakers during World Water Week, presented by Chief Sealth International High School students at the school March 21-25.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Mexican Farms Need a Water Revolution - IPS ipsnews.net
Mexican Farms Need a Water Revolution - IPS ipsnews.net
Mexican Farms Need a Water Revolution
By Emilio Godoy*
MEXICO CITY, Nov 17, 2010 (Tierramérica) - Without financing, many Mexican farmers cannot improve their ageing irrigation systems, which are essential if Mexico is to withstand the effects of climate change and reduce its emissions of greenhouse-effect gases.
Pressurised and drip irrigation are two leading-edge options that also make relatively efficient use of water and electricity, reducing power fossil fuel burning and greenhouse gases emissions.
These new systems are expensive, but "they would allow us to grow crops year-round and have more jobs and better incomes," farmer Oseas Espino told Tierramérica. He grows sorghum on about 30 hectares in the Yecapixtla municipality in the southwestern state of Morelos.
Espino is one example of the thousands of small and medium farmers who are unable to modernise their irrigation systems.
The most widely-used system is based on gravity, with electrical pumping equipment. But it "generates inefficiency in the use of water and electricity," Nemecio Castillo, an advisor with the National Institute of Forestry and Agricultural Research, told Tierramérica.
Seventy-seven percent of Mexico's piped water goes to agricultural use. There are some 118,000 wells for farming, but the authorities have rehabilitated just 6,000 of them.
Annually, operation of an inefficient well consumes about 200,000 cubic metres of water and generates 350 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), one of the main greenhouse gases.
A well operated using modern technologies requires half the water and reduces greenhouse emissions to 98 tonnes of CO2, according to calculations by the non-governmental organisations El Barzón and Oxfam Mexico, which are promoting a plan to update the country's farm irrigation systems.
According to these organisations, inefficient water use in agriculture means that more than 80 percent of Mexico's 180 largest aquifers are overexploited and it is already difficult to sustain the total irrigated area.
The total farmed area in Mexico is more than 20 million hectares, with irrigation for 5.3 to 5.5 million hectares, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography. The most abundant crops are maize, beans and sorghum, which require a great deal of water to grow.
Maize -- used to make the tortilla, a staple in the Mexican diet -- requires 1,700 cubic metres of water per tonne produced, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. One tonne of sorghum needs 1,200 cubic metres of water per tonne.
Of the 630,000 registered farms in Mexico, just 16 percent have irrigation and 12 percent utilise unconventional techniques, report El Barzón and Oxfam.
There are 85 irrigation districts that cover 3.5 million hectares in hands of 583,000 users, particularly in central and northern Mexico, states the National Water Commission.
Those districts demand 30 billion cubic metres of water per year, 90 percent of which comes from reservoirs and 10 percent from underground sources.
From 2000 to 2009, agricultural electrical consumption jumped 17 percent. Government subsidies for energy purchases for farming -- about 50 cents on the dollar per kilowatt -- have cost 640 million dollars in public funds this year.
A traditional gravity-based system "irrigates one hectare in 24 hours, while a drip system does it in three or four hours," irrigation engineer José de Santos told Tierramérica.
According to Oxfam and El Barzón, the combination of an efficient well and modernised irrigation would be the equivalent of reducing CO2 emissions by 36 percent, energy consumption 40 percent and water use 50 percent.
Mexico emits 715.3 million tonnes of CO2 per year, six percent originating from agriculture.
Drip irrigation, which directs the water to the plant roots through soaker hoses, and pressurised irrigation, which uses closed pipes and sprinklers to create a directed precipitation, are the main alternatives to irrigation channels.
But their costs are quite prohibitive for small and medium farmers: 2,250 to 2,500 dollars to set up a system, according to figures from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
An additional obstacle is the government's slow action on the problem. The Ministry of Agriculture launched the Strategic Project for Irrigation Modernisation, with a budget of 52 million dollars for this year and the goal to update 22,000 hectares, benefitting 1,500 farmers. But the farmers have to put up another four million dollars to obtain the equipment.
"The cost is very high. The problem is that many farmers rent their land, and the owners aren't interested in adding the technology," said irrigation expert De Santos.
Since 2006, the National Water Commission has modernised irrigation on 599,000 hectares, with financing of 240 million dollars. The goal for 2012 is to reach 1.2 million hectares with irrigation.
In addition, "we have to move towards crops that require less water," like garbanzo beans, vegetables, fruits and oil crops. "The farmers need to be aware that water is a finite resource," said farming advisor Castillo.
In any case, there is no alternative to modernisation: one hectare yields 27.3 tonnes if it is irrigated, compared to just 7.8 tonnes without irrigation. And climate change will only intensify the droughts that are already taking a toll on Mexican farming, warns the National Institute of Ecology.
* This IPS story is part of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network http://www.cdkn.org (END)
Mexican Farms Need a Water Revolution
By Emilio Godoy*
MEXICO CITY, Nov 17, 2010 (Tierramérica) - Without financing, many Mexican farmers cannot improve their ageing irrigation systems, which are essential if Mexico is to withstand the effects of climate change and reduce its emissions of greenhouse-effect gases.
Pressurised and drip irrigation are two leading-edge options that also make relatively efficient use of water and electricity, reducing power fossil fuel burning and greenhouse gases emissions.
These new systems are expensive, but "they would allow us to grow crops year-round and have more jobs and better incomes," farmer Oseas Espino told Tierramérica. He grows sorghum on about 30 hectares in the Yecapixtla municipality in the southwestern state of Morelos.
Espino is one example of the thousands of small and medium farmers who are unable to modernise their irrigation systems.
The most widely-used system is based on gravity, with electrical pumping equipment. But it "generates inefficiency in the use of water and electricity," Nemecio Castillo, an advisor with the National Institute of Forestry and Agricultural Research, told Tierramérica.
Seventy-seven percent of Mexico's piped water goes to agricultural use. There are some 118,000 wells for farming, but the authorities have rehabilitated just 6,000 of them.
Annually, operation of an inefficient well consumes about 200,000 cubic metres of water and generates 350 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), one of the main greenhouse gases.
A well operated using modern technologies requires half the water and reduces greenhouse emissions to 98 tonnes of CO2, according to calculations by the non-governmental organisations El Barzón and Oxfam Mexico, which are promoting a plan to update the country's farm irrigation systems.
According to these organisations, inefficient water use in agriculture means that more than 80 percent of Mexico's 180 largest aquifers are overexploited and it is already difficult to sustain the total irrigated area.
The total farmed area in Mexico is more than 20 million hectares, with irrigation for 5.3 to 5.5 million hectares, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography. The most abundant crops are maize, beans and sorghum, which require a great deal of water to grow.
Maize -- used to make the tortilla, a staple in the Mexican diet -- requires 1,700 cubic metres of water per tonne produced, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. One tonne of sorghum needs 1,200 cubic metres of water per tonne.
Of the 630,000 registered farms in Mexico, just 16 percent have irrigation and 12 percent utilise unconventional techniques, report El Barzón and Oxfam.
There are 85 irrigation districts that cover 3.5 million hectares in hands of 583,000 users, particularly in central and northern Mexico, states the National Water Commission.
Those districts demand 30 billion cubic metres of water per year, 90 percent of which comes from reservoirs and 10 percent from underground sources.
From 2000 to 2009, agricultural electrical consumption jumped 17 percent. Government subsidies for energy purchases for farming -- about 50 cents on the dollar per kilowatt -- have cost 640 million dollars in public funds this year.
A traditional gravity-based system "irrigates one hectare in 24 hours, while a drip system does it in three or four hours," irrigation engineer José de Santos told Tierramérica.
According to Oxfam and El Barzón, the combination of an efficient well and modernised irrigation would be the equivalent of reducing CO2 emissions by 36 percent, energy consumption 40 percent and water use 50 percent.
Mexico emits 715.3 million tonnes of CO2 per year, six percent originating from agriculture.
Drip irrigation, which directs the water to the plant roots through soaker hoses, and pressurised irrigation, which uses closed pipes and sprinklers to create a directed precipitation, are the main alternatives to irrigation channels.
But their costs are quite prohibitive for small and medium farmers: 2,250 to 2,500 dollars to set up a system, according to figures from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
An additional obstacle is the government's slow action on the problem. The Ministry of Agriculture launched the Strategic Project for Irrigation Modernisation, with a budget of 52 million dollars for this year and the goal to update 22,000 hectares, benefitting 1,500 farmers. But the farmers have to put up another four million dollars to obtain the equipment.
"The cost is very high. The problem is that many farmers rent their land, and the owners aren't interested in adding the technology," said irrigation expert De Santos.
Since 2006, the National Water Commission has modernised irrigation on 599,000 hectares, with financing of 240 million dollars. The goal for 2012 is to reach 1.2 million hectares with irrigation.
In addition, "we have to move towards crops that require less water," like garbanzo beans, vegetables, fruits and oil crops. "The farmers need to be aware that water is a finite resource," said farming advisor Castillo.
In any case, there is no alternative to modernisation: one hectare yields 27.3 tonnes if it is irrigated, compared to just 7.8 tonnes without irrigation. And climate change will only intensify the droughts that are already taking a toll on Mexican farming, warns the National Institute of Ecology.
* This IPS story is part of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network http://www.cdkn.org (END)
Monday, June 14, 2010
The Water Situation in Mexico is Devastating and Worrisome
In the current Mexican water situation round table, Jean Robert, an expert on the topic, pointed out that many of the projects implemented by organizations in power come to destroy the natural resources of the zones with rough richness using by utopian ideas that have nothing to do with the reality of the context in which they take place.
He explained, to the public and to the experts with whom he shared the analytical table in “Search for a sustainable life”, that the vital liquid situation in Mexico is getting more devastating and worrisome.
He pointed out that many of these utopian ideas are carried out by those who maintain political, economic and scientific power, who impose mega-projects on communities, greatly affecting the development of those same communities.
For his part, Roberto Romero of the foundation “Gonzalo Río Arronte,” maintained that Mexico needs to clarify points of analysis in its critical water situation. The culture that the Mexicans, he related, is seen with regard to water use and the integrated management of the basins. The afore-mentioned should be analyzed with a global vision in which the integration of the inhabitants, the authorities and the private institutions that want to support the emerging projects in the convergence of different sectors of society is dealt with.
The participants agreed on the necessity of starting from projects that take into account the current situation of the natural resources, in addition to the needs of the people, since often the governments don’t have a comprehensive vision for optimizing the natural resources and end up detonating important processes.
Finally, they discussed the need to return to pre-hispanic customs left by earlier cultures. The alternative water construction, cultivation and storage techniques are taken from ancestral practices that have been forgotten by Mexicans and aren’t being taken advantage of as they could be.
He explained, to the public and to the experts with whom he shared the analytical table in “Search for a sustainable life”, that the vital liquid situation in Mexico is getting more devastating and worrisome.
He pointed out that many of these utopian ideas are carried out by those who maintain political, economic and scientific power, who impose mega-projects on communities, greatly affecting the development of those same communities.
For his part, Roberto Romero of the foundation “Gonzalo Río Arronte,” maintained that Mexico needs to clarify points of analysis in its critical water situation. The culture that the Mexicans, he related, is seen with regard to water use and the integrated management of the basins. The afore-mentioned should be analyzed with a global vision in which the integration of the inhabitants, the authorities and the private institutions that want to support the emerging projects in the convergence of different sectors of society is dealt with.
The participants agreed on the necessity of starting from projects that take into account the current situation of the natural resources, in addition to the needs of the people, since often the governments don’t have a comprehensive vision for optimizing the natural resources and end up detonating important processes.
Finally, they discussed the need to return to pre-hispanic customs left by earlier cultures. The alternative water construction, cultivation and storage techniques are taken from ancestral practices that have been forgotten by Mexicans and aren’t being taken advantage of as they could be.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Fears That a Lush Land May Lose a Foul Fertilizer--Mixquiahuala Journal
Fears That a Lush Land May Lose a Foul Fertilizer--Mixquiahuala Journal
From the New York Times
From the roads here in the Mezquital Valley, fields stretch to the hills in a panoply of green, graced by willow trees. But up close, where Mr. Mera is paid for every acre of field he irrigates, the smell and look of the water that feeds this lushness chokes the senses.
With only rubber boots for protection, he does not buy into the general belief here that the water does no harm, that a scrub with detergent each night will cure whatever ills it brings. Itchy boils break out on his hands, he said. He is often sick with colds and the flu.
“Of course it affects us because the water is so dirty,” said Mr. Mera, a laborer who has worked in the muck of these fields for 38 years, since he was 15. “But there’s nothing else to do.”
For 100 years, Mexico City has flushed its wastewater north to irrigate the farmland of Hidalgo State. This foul cascade, which the farmers call “the black waters,” flows through a latticework of canals and then trickles over the fields.
So when word got out that the government was finally going to build a giant wastewater treatment plant, one might have expected the farmers around here to be excited. Instead, they were suspicious.
“Without that water, there is no life, “ said Gregorio Cruz Alamilla, 60, who has worked his family’s 12-acre farm since he was a boy.
Mr. Cruz knows the water is loaded with toxic substances, including chemicals dumped by factories, and he tires of clearing his field of plastic bottles and wrappings every time he irrigates.
But like many others here, he worries that treating the water, though it may remove harmful contaminants, will also strip away some of the natural fertilizers that even the authorities here say have helped make this valley so productive. And despite the government’s assurances, the farmers here suspect the worst: that once the water is treated, it will be pumped back to Mexico City, leaving the farms dry.
“If they take away the black waters we will die of hunger,” Mr. Cruz said. “We don’t know how to do anything else.”
Farmers irrigate crops with wastewater across the developing world, but nowhere else on the scale of Mezquital Valley, researchers say. The 350 square miles of the valley’s irrigated fields lie at the end of a crisscross of tunnels, rivers, lakes, dams and reservoirs that date from the 14th century, when the Aztecs settled on an island amid lakes and engineered the first network of dikes and dams to control the floodwaters.
Mexico City has never managed to keep those waters at bay. When they break loose, as they do most every year during the rainy season, the wastewater gushes into the streets and swamps the patios of working-class neighborhoods in the city’s low-lying eastern suburbs.
It has been almost 40 years since Mexico City has built a new tunnel to drain the city’s wastewater, and it now needs constant maintenance. Since then, the population of the metropolitan area has doubled to almost 20 million people.
“It was a predictable problem, but we never paid enough attention to it,” said Ernesto E. Espino de la O, who manages the treatment and water supply project for the National Water Commission. A collapse of the crumbling system, warned one study from Mexico’s National Autonomous University of Mexico, would be catastrophic, flooding large parts of the city.
To stop the flooding, the federal government is building a 38.5-mile tunnel to drain all the wastewater north at a rate of 40,000 gallons a second. “In July, August and September, we need the whole system to work well,” said Rafael Carmona Paredes, who is in charge of the tunnel project for the commission, known as Conagua.
Engineers have begun to drill a series of giant shafts going down as far as almost 500 feet. Below, enormous circular boring machines cut through the rock and lay down the tunnel’s concrete casing. At the tunnel’s end, near the town of Atotonilco, is the site of the planned water treatment plant, now just a sloping hillside and a sign with a promise.
“It is a disgrace that Mexico City doesn’t treat its wastewater,” said José Ramón Ardavín, the deputy director of Conagua.
The plant, which is budgeted to cost $1 billion and will begin operating in 2012, will clean 60 percent of the city’s wastewater. The water commission’s measurements show that the water is laced with heavy metals like lead and arsenic, filled with high levels of pathogens and parasites, and weighed down by grease.
But the farmers “are worried that the treatment plant will take out the nutrients, that the water will go back to Mexico City and that it will be privatized,” said Filemón Rodríguez Castillo, the director of the main irrigation district here. “The water is very much appreciated here, independent of the fact that it smells so ugly, that it stinks.”
One of his jobs is to persuade local residents that even though the residents of Mexico City will have to pay to have their water treated, they will not get it back.
The main benefit of irrigating with clean water, he has told them, is that they will be able to grow many kinds of vegetables, which are now restricted to protect consumers from illness.
Officials here now direct farmers not to grow crops in which the edible part comes into contact with the irrigation water and is eaten raw, ruling out vegetables like lettuce, carrots or beets. Alfalfa is permitted because it is used as animal feed. But enforcement is spotty and the farmers abide by an elastic interpretation of the regulations, planting broccoli and cauliflower, for example.
To the farmers here, whose sturdy opinions match their surprisingly good health, the proof that their water is good is in what they see around them. “Plants won’t absorb poison; they would die,” said Jesús Aldana Ángeles, a 75-year-old fifth-generation farmer, who was watching his small flock of sheep munch on the remains of his harvested alfalfa field. “There is no better laboratory than the ground. The earth absorbs everything. It purifies it, it treats it.”
As the sun set, he brought the sheep in, crossing a footpath over an irrigation ditch that curls around his house like a black moat. “Bad water would never make anything green,” he said. “But here the black waters turn everything green.”
From the New York Times
Published: May 4, 2010
By ELISABETH MALKIN
MIXQUIAHUALA, Mexico — Night and day, Marcelo Mera Bárcenas slops the fetid water that has coursed 60 miles downhill from the sewers of Mexico City and spreads it over the corn and alfalfa fields of this once arid land. The New York Times
Mexico City's sewage irrigates Hidalgo State's farmland.
With only rubber boots for protection, he does not buy into the general belief here that the water does no harm, that a scrub with detergent each night will cure whatever ills it brings. Itchy boils break out on his hands, he said. He is often sick with colds and the flu.
“Of course it affects us because the water is so dirty,” said Mr. Mera, a laborer who has worked in the muck of these fields for 38 years, since he was 15. “But there’s nothing else to do.”
For 100 years, Mexico City has flushed its wastewater north to irrigate the farmland of Hidalgo State. This foul cascade, which the farmers call “the black waters,” flows through a latticework of canals and then trickles over the fields.
So when word got out that the government was finally going to build a giant wastewater treatment plant, one might have expected the farmers around here to be excited. Instead, they were suspicious.
“Without that water, there is no life, “ said Gregorio Cruz Alamilla, 60, who has worked his family’s 12-acre farm since he was a boy.
Mr. Cruz knows the water is loaded with toxic substances, including chemicals dumped by factories, and he tires of clearing his field of plastic bottles and wrappings every time he irrigates.
But like many others here, he worries that treating the water, though it may remove harmful contaminants, will also strip away some of the natural fertilizers that even the authorities here say have helped make this valley so productive. And despite the government’s assurances, the farmers here suspect the worst: that once the water is treated, it will be pumped back to Mexico City, leaving the farms dry.
“If they take away the black waters we will die of hunger,” Mr. Cruz said. “We don’t know how to do anything else.”
Farmers irrigate crops with wastewater across the developing world, but nowhere else on the scale of Mezquital Valley, researchers say. The 350 square miles of the valley’s irrigated fields lie at the end of a crisscross of tunnels, rivers, lakes, dams and reservoirs that date from the 14th century, when the Aztecs settled on an island amid lakes and engineered the first network of dikes and dams to control the floodwaters.
Mexico City has never managed to keep those waters at bay. When they break loose, as they do most every year during the rainy season, the wastewater gushes into the streets and swamps the patios of working-class neighborhoods in the city’s low-lying eastern suburbs.
It has been almost 40 years since Mexico City has built a new tunnel to drain the city’s wastewater, and it now needs constant maintenance. Since then, the population of the metropolitan area has doubled to almost 20 million people.
“It was a predictable problem, but we never paid enough attention to it,” said Ernesto E. Espino de la O, who manages the treatment and water supply project for the National Water Commission. A collapse of the crumbling system, warned one study from Mexico’s National Autonomous University of Mexico, would be catastrophic, flooding large parts of the city.
To stop the flooding, the federal government is building a 38.5-mile tunnel to drain all the wastewater north at a rate of 40,000 gallons a second. “In July, August and September, we need the whole system to work well,” said Rafael Carmona Paredes, who is in charge of the tunnel project for the commission, known as Conagua.
Engineers have begun to drill a series of giant shafts going down as far as almost 500 feet. Below, enormous circular boring machines cut through the rock and lay down the tunnel’s concrete casing. At the tunnel’s end, near the town of Atotonilco, is the site of the planned water treatment plant, now just a sloping hillside and a sign with a promise.
“It is a disgrace that Mexico City doesn’t treat its wastewater,” said José Ramón Ardavín, the deputy director of Conagua.
The plant, which is budgeted to cost $1 billion and will begin operating in 2012, will clean 60 percent of the city’s wastewater. The water commission’s measurements show that the water is laced with heavy metals like lead and arsenic, filled with high levels of pathogens and parasites, and weighed down by grease.
But the farmers “are worried that the treatment plant will take out the nutrients, that the water will go back to Mexico City and that it will be privatized,” said Filemón Rodríguez Castillo, the director of the main irrigation district here. “The water is very much appreciated here, independent of the fact that it smells so ugly, that it stinks.”
One of his jobs is to persuade local residents that even though the residents of Mexico City will have to pay to have their water treated, they will not get it back.
The main benefit of irrigating with clean water, he has told them, is that they will be able to grow many kinds of vegetables, which are now restricted to protect consumers from illness.
Officials here now direct farmers not to grow crops in which the edible part comes into contact with the irrigation water and is eaten raw, ruling out vegetables like lettuce, carrots or beets. Alfalfa is permitted because it is used as animal feed. But enforcement is spotty and the farmers abide by an elastic interpretation of the regulations, planting broccoli and cauliflower, for example.
To the farmers here, whose sturdy opinions match their surprisingly good health, the proof that their water is good is in what they see around them. “Plants won’t absorb poison; they would die,” said Jesús Aldana Ángeles, a 75-year-old fifth-generation farmer, who was watching his small flock of sheep munch on the remains of his harvested alfalfa field. “There is no better laboratory than the ground. The earth absorbs everything. It purifies it, it treats it.”
As the sun set, he brought the sheep in, crossing a footpath over an irrigation ditch that curls around his house like a black moat. “Bad water would never make anything green,” he said. “But here the black waters turn everything green.”
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Earth Day and bottled water
Today is Earth Day and the group "Food and Water watch" has a great article about the "Take back the Tap" project. Please take action to stop bottle water here
Please click through and view the video from Food and Water Watch.
Thanks
Rick
Please click through and view the video from Food and Water Watch.
Thanks
Rick
Friday, April 9, 2010
What’s wrong with buying bottled water?
An interesting video about why we need to protect and support municipal water systems.
What’s wrong with buying bottled water?
What’s wrong with buying bottled water?
What is the significance of the privatization of water?
Please check out this video from John Todd.
What is the significance of the privatization of water?
Why keeping water as a public asset.
What is the significance of the privatization of water?
Why keeping water as a public asset.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Reduce Your Water Use!
It wasn´t long ago we were hopping on our bikes and breezing our way to work, unable to fork over the $4+ a gallon for gasoline. Maybe the sun had us feeling a little extra ambitious during the summer of 2008, but the climbing gas prices certainly didn´t hinder our motivation to bike.
What kind of scenario do we need to boost our conversation of water?
We may be aware of the daily methods to conserve water (things like flushing the toilet only when necessary, turning off the faucet while brushing our teeth and taking shorter showers) that can reduce our household´s water consumption and the utility bill.
What else can we do?
As posted recently on Water for the Ages, a water audit is a helpful way to determine our household´s water consumption and the steps we can take to reduce it. Try this online audit, or this one...
While you´re conducting your audit, think about the following: We require between five and 13 gallons/day for our basic needs. Typically, individuals in developed nations use at least 40 gallons per day each. It isn´t difficult to see why. We use on average one gallon of water/min washing dishes in the kitchen sink, five gallons every toilet flush (1.6 low-flow), and 25 gallons every five minutes in the shower.
Join me and many others in conducting an audit and taking a pledge to reduce our water use!
What kind of scenario do we need to boost our conversation of water?
We may be aware of the daily methods to conserve water (things like flushing the toilet only when necessary, turning off the faucet while brushing our teeth and taking shorter showers) that can reduce our household´s water consumption and the utility bill.What else can we do?
As posted recently on Water for the Ages, a water audit is a helpful way to determine our household´s water consumption and the steps we can take to reduce it. Try this online audit, or this one...
While you´re conducting your audit, think about the following: We require between five and 13 gallons/day for our basic needs. Typically, individuals in developed nations use at least 40 gallons per day each. It isn´t difficult to see why. We use on average one gallon of water/min washing dishes in the kitchen sink, five gallons every toilet flush (1.6 low-flow), and 25 gallons every five minutes in the shower.
Join me and many others in conducting an audit and taking a pledge to reduce our water use!
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