The standard model of the Water Cycle (check it out, kids) is that there is a constant, finite amount of water on Earth, in an endless cycle of evaporation and condensation, all of it powered by the sun. No new water will be created and none will be destroyed. It will only change physical state and location.
This is all apparently true enough. If the planet were left to its own devices. The technicality is in how the cycle is affected by human use and manipulation of our little clear pal. We have dammed rivers, created and removed entire bodies of water, continuously pumped out groundwater at a rate faster than it can be replenished, and in other ways have altered the natural arrangement of how water evaporates and condenses.
This also impacts the amount and quality of groundwater in our aquifers, which contributes to springs and wells drying up. Let us also add to this doom and gloom cocktail a jigger or two of chemicals and/or toxins, which might be "removed" out by the process of infiltration, but it takes thousands if not millions of years and even that is arguable.
And then there are the legal maneuverings of governments and private firms diverting, manipulating and privatizing water in the name of the public good, which of course, means satisfying the desires of constituent/consumers in the name of survival. Whether these regulating entities are referring to their own survival or not is a bit too easy of a point to make.
In the solutions department, the most popular "fixes" are based on insuring water for human use: desalinization of seawater, filtration of greywater, and conservation. Discussions of more profound changes like dam removal are something else altogether.
2 comments:
This is exactly why it's so important that we remove legal barriers that restrict individuals and firms from purifying and trading water. That way, lots of greedy people will build many purification and desalination plants, the product of which they will then sell to us cheep. Why cheep? Because competition between "water farms" is inevitable, if you allow it. I buy my yummy peaches from private peach farms, and it's high time I bought my yummy water (all of it, showers and drinking alike) from private water farms. I can understand fears about privatizing the only river through town. But restricting desalination and water trade is inhumane. Water provision is a perfect example of a market solution begging to happen.
Hi Jason, and thanks for being the very first commenter (if that's even a word) to this thing.
I have to say that I don't see any legal barriers to private firms desalinizing water. Or at least no more than they would encounter opening up any similar type of processing plant.
As far as free market "solutions" to public utilities are concerned, the model you suggest already exists with bottled water, the largest portion of which consists of companies purifying existing tap water, bottling it in plastic containers, and selling it to a public convinced by advertising that their existing tap water is somehow unsafe. For the most part, those claims have been proven to be false.
Privately held sources like Evian, Calistoga, etc. certainly are not restricted from doing their business.
If, on the other hand, you are referring to municipalities outsourcing their water delivery systems to private firms, this has also proven to be much more costly to the citizen (as opposed to the "consumer), who ultimately foots the bill. Since the purpose of municipal entities is to provide safe water at the lowest possible cost, free of a profit motive, those costs are kept lower. When a private firm, whose sole purpose is to maximize profit, is given the same charge, prices to the user historically have risen. In these situations, there is no "competition" driving prices down, but rather a firm being given a contract and control over rates and services.
To use your "yummy peach" metaphor, consider this, as it actually applies to water:
1. You have to eat peaches every day or you will die.
2. The peaches have always been in the grove, never needed to be planted, fertilized or maintained and are always perfect.
3. Taxpayers paid for pipes that get peaches to every house and business in town, plus providing pipes where anyone can get peaches for free, and the maintenance of those pipes. Perhaps because of declining municipal revenues or an increase in population, the towns peach pipe system needs repair.
4. A multi-national corporation comes to town and says that they will take over the maintenance of the pipes, and that the users will now pay them, rather than the town. Their argument is that the town will be freed from the costs of maintaining the peach pipes.
5. Access to the peaches is now owned by the corporation. The corporation may, at any time, sell off, alter, or in case of bankruptcy, abandon the peach pipes without any oversight or input from the town. What happens after that, the corporation does not say.
6. The town, having been there as long as anyone can remember, could have raised money through bonds and other long-term method to do what the corporation did, but the town will always be there, its administrators subject to the will of the users via elections and recalls.
7. The peaches are still there.
"Restricting" desalinization and "water trade" would be inhumane if they were the only ways to get water. Using something that people need to survive on a daily basis to generate profits isn't inhumane.
It is, however, obscene.
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