We cannot be repaired is not to be regretted. Around 6 million to 4 million years ago, the first humans emerged. Like us, they breathed in oxygen, from an atmosphere, of ancient origins. These ancient humans also were protected from harmful ultraviolet radiation by an ozone shield, in the stratosphere. There populations were not significant, and their impact on the biosphere was not significant. However, about 10,000 years ago, agriculture began in earnest, and laid the foundation for rapid population growth. With agriculture, and the medical and industrial revolutions that followed, human population growth became exponential in a mere blip of evolutionary time—some would go as far to say the World is overpopulated and that is what is leading to all the conflict, wars, disease, and scarcity.

With that being said, if possible, it is best to reduce consumption of everything. If you can walk, then walk, instead of driving. When leaving a room, turn off the lights, use climate control as little as possible (maybe drink water to cool down and hot tea or coffee and a sweater to warm up), do not waste food or water. If you are not sure if you will like your cuisine or not, then buy something that you know you will enjoy. And if you can, save as much money as possible, for as long as you can; be sure to check out the sales racks and clearance racks, at the end of each season, to find stylish clothes you can wear next year. Simple things can make a huge difference. Also, do you really need cable? Over five years, consumers are spending an average of $8,400.00 on cable. That is crazy, would nice down payment on a car, or the start of that 20 percent down payment you will need when you buy a house.

Meanwhile, there is a tremendous amount of water in the World, yet three of every four humans do not have enough water or, if they do, it is contaminated. Most water is too salty for human consumptions or agriculture. So that rain that falls out of the sky is really a blessing. For every million liters of water, only about 6 liters are in a readily useable form. However, there have been consequences of large scale irrigation. 21 percent of the Earth’s land is now being used for agriculture. Expansion of agricultural production is coupled with the exponential growth of the human population—and about one-third of the food being produced today grows on irrigated land.

Water is piped in into agricultural fields from groundwater or from lakes, reservoirs, and other sources of surface water. Irrigation can change the productivity of the land. Water available for irrigation often is loaded with mineral salts. In regions where the soil does not drain well, evaporation may cause salination (salt accumulation) in the soil. Salination can stunt growth, decrease yields, and eventually kill crop plants. Also, improperly drained irrigated lands can become waterlogged. Water accumulating underground can gradually rise the water table (the upper limit of group that is fully saturated with water). When the water table is close to the surface, the soil around the plant roots becomes saturated with toxic saline water. Salinity and waterlogging can be corrected with proper management of the water-soil system. However, the economic cost can be high.

We use ground water for many purposes, but irrigation is often paramount. Nonetheless, major underground aquifers contain 95 percent of all fresh water. These aquifers are being depleted in many areas and contaminated elsewhere through pollution and saltwater intrusion. Consider what is happening to the Ogallala Aquifer in the United States of America. The Ogallala Aquifer occupies the High Plains of the United States, extending northward from western Texas to South Dakota. The Ogallala is the leading geologic formation, in what is known as, the High Plains Aquifer System. The entire system underlies 174,000 square miles of eight states, in America.

The Ogallala Aquifer is about 10 million years old, making in older than human life, on Earth. And sadly, The Ogallala Aquifer is being both depleted and polluted, at an alarming rate. Farmers withdraw so much water, from the aquifer that the annual overdraft (the amount of water not replenished) is nearly equal to the annual flow of the Colorado River (22.2 million acre feet). As a result, the already low water tables, in much of the United States of America, are dropping rapidly, and stream and underground spring flows are dwindling. However, since 1976, the Water Factory 21 Direct Injection Project, located in Orange County, California, has been injecting highly treated recycled water into the aquifer to prevent salt water intrusion, while augmenting the potable ground water supply. Still, this leaves many asking, where will the water come from when we deleted the aquifers?

Clean fresh water is arguably one of the World’s most valuable assets, but often times it is taken for granted. People look around and see all the water in the oceans and think we have an unlimited supply of water. However, that is not the case, 75 percent of the world is made up of water, but only 0.3 percent of that water is drinkable. We typically cannot drink seawater. The fresh water we drink comes from rivers and streams. The reason we cannot drink seawater is because it has a high salt content, and that would dehydrate one’s body, and it is might also cause high blood pressure.

As populations continue to grow, they demand for water is increasing greatly. The World’s water consumption is doubling every 20 years, and by 2025, the demand for water will exceed the supply of water by 56 percent. Water is very important, as we need it to wash clothes, shower, do dishes, feed livestock, and water crops. The United States uses about 346,000 million gallons of fresh water per day, and 80 percent of that is used for irrigation and the average person uses about 100 gallons of water per day. That is an incredible amount of water being used.

Without clean drinkable water, people will get sick and germs will spread because they cannot be washed away, so it is important that we do not waste water. Currently 1.1 Billion people lack access to clean drinking water. Some are speculating that not having enough water in the near future could lead to wars over water because water ways are shared by more than one authority and controlled by different counties. So scientists are looking for ways to combat these issues and ensure that we have enough water for everyone.

As you know, water is needed to build homes, create new businesses, raise livestock and it really improves our quality of life. It is a luxury to take a bath every day, wash your hair and prepare meals with fresh water. Most people typically feel better about themselves when they are clean. China is working to eliminate water waste, by allowing farmers to control their sprinklers, by mobile phone. The farmers are now able to insure the farms are being water adequately, without ever leaving the comfort of their home.

Since there is so much seawater, many people wonder why we do not filter the water in the ocean so that one will be able to drink it. The process of filtering seawater and making it drinkable is called Desalination. Desalination is not a new technology, but it is expensive. 97 percent of the water in the world is in the ocean. Since that is the case, we should be able to use that water to meet our needs. Many companies like general electric are investing in the future by creating machines that can desalinate water, at an affordable cost. There are about 12,500 desalination plants around the world, they produce about 14 million cubic meters of fresh water each day, but that is less than 1% of total consumption.

Coastal states like California and Florida have been producing desalinated water for years, but it is so expensive that it has not caught on. Nonetheless, with the demand of water increasing, investors are interested in preventing disasters, and looking to make a profit, while making water affordable. Some private investors have come up with ways to produce Desalinated seawater for $2 dollars per thousand gallons, but environmentalist are opposing the idea saying pumping high salinity waste water back into the ocean.

At some point, we have to learn to work together, and solve problems before they turn into major issues and people die. If we do not have clean water to drink, it will devastate our economy and greatly reduce the quality of life. It is important to honor the environment, but if we do not learn to properly work with the environment, this world will become a disaster. So instead of opposing ideas that will save us, like desalination of seawater, people need to come up with solutions.

Saudi Arabia and some other Persian Gulf countries desalinate seawater for their urban populations. However, those countries are among the very few with huge energy reserves and cash to spare. Yet, that is no excuse, as American is supposed to lead in innovation and finances. After suffering through prolonged droughts, cities along California coast are now willing to consider desalination, as well as reclamation of wastewater to irrigate landscaping. Conversely, such efforts cannot solve the core issue. Not having enough water is a serious issue. And unfortunately, the problem is being compounded by pollution of the water that is available. Water becomes unfit to drink, even swim in, once it contains human sewage, animal waste, dead flies, and various toxic chemicals. Those pollutants can encourage contamination, by pathogenic microbes. Agricultural runoff pollutes water with sediments, pesticides, and plant nutrients. Power plants and factories pollute water with chemicals, radioactive materials, and excess heat (thermal pollution).

Pollutants accumulate in lakes, rivers, and bays before reaching their ultimate destination, the oceans. Many cities throughout the World dump untreated sewage into coastal waters. Cities along rivers and harbor maintain shipping channels by dredging the polluted muck and barging it out to sea, and that is why the oceans in California and other parts of the United States of America are brown or dark green and not clear, blue or sea green. They barge out sewage sludge, also. (Sludge refers to coarse, settled solids. It contains bacteria, viruses, toxic metals, and possibly hospital waste.) Sometimes, following storms, this black sludge washes ashore.

The United States of America has about 15,000 facilities for treating the liquid wastes, from about 70 percent, of the population and 87,000 industries. The remaining wastes, mostly from suburban and rural populations, are treated in lagoons or septic tanks or discharged—untreated—directly into waterways. Since 1978, the upper Occoquan Sewage Authority has been discharging recycled water into a stream above Occoquan Reservoir, a potable water supply source for Fairfax County, Virginia. Nevertheless, most wastewater is not being properly treated. A typical pattern is repeated thousands of times, along our water ways. Water for drinking is removed upstream from a city, and wastes from industry and sewage treatment are discharged downstream. It takes no great leap of faith to see that pollution intensifies as rivers flow toward oceans.

As you may recall, there are three levels of wastewater treatment. In primary treatment, screens and settle tanks remove the sludge, which is then dried, burned, dumped in landfills, or treated further. *Chlorine often is used to kill pathogens, in the water, but it does not kill them all. Furthermore, chlorine may react with certain industrial chemicals to produce chlorinated organic compounds, some of which are carcinogens. In secondary treatment, microbial populations are employed to degrade the organic matter. Secondary treatment occurs after primary treatment, but before chlorination. The wastewater is either sprayed or trickled through large beds of exposed gravel, in which microbes live, or aerated in tanks and seeded with microbes. Toxic solutes sometimes poison the microbial employees, however.

The combination of primary and secondary treatment does remove most oxygen-demanding wastes and suspend solids. Still, considerable nitrogen, phosphorus, and toxic substances, including heavy metals, pesticides, and industrial chemicals still remain. Usually the water gets chlorinated before being released into the waterways, but sometimes not. Tertiary treatment is largely experimental. Tertiary treatment may adequately reduce pollution levels. Being expensive, It is used on only 5 percent of the nation’s wastewater.

In Louisiana, where waters drained from the central states flow toward the Gulf of Mexico, pollution levels are high enough to be a threat to public health. Water destined for drinking does get treated to remove pathogens. However, the treatment does not remove toxic wastes from numerous factories upstream. You may find it illuminating to investigate where your own city’s supply of water comes from and where is has been.

It is important to note that about 85-percent of the City of Sacramento, California’s drinking water comes from local rivers, not ground water. Ground water often times have chemicals like chromium 6 in it, which is a heavy metal. Chromium 6 can occur naturally but can also enter drinking water sources, by historic leaks, from industrial plants’ hazardous waste sites. When inhaled, Chromium 6 is known to be a potent carcinogen. Research also shows that in laboratory mice and rats, who were exposed to Chromium 6, through drinking water, the Chromium 6 was recently found to also cause cancer in these test subjects.

As the population increases, more demands are placed on water supplies, and recycled water may be a viable option. In Southern California, more than 66 percent of their water supply is imported from outside the region, mainly from the Sacramento River and The Colorado River.

Recycled water is wastewater from homes, businesses, and industry that, as a result of advanced treatment, has been made reusable again for various types of uses, treatments that exceed state and federal drinking water standards. Microfiltration and reverse osmosis are the most advanced phases of water treatment, and the final product is as pure as the bottled water you buy at your local supermarket. And by recycling water, we are cleaning it before it goes into the ocean, which will help keep the ocean and animals safe. Humans must never be a slave of routine; but in old days, it was a routine of great thoughts, and now it is a routine of little ones. If you want to mar a nature, you have to reform it.