46 replies to this topic

[DrBubb]

The Importance of Fresh water
Anecdotes, "solutions" to the emerging shortage
============================================



WATER : Is it Blue Gold?
Water is destined to be precious and much more expensive in many parts of the world, but people still use it as if it were free and in unlimited supply.

I thought it was time to start collecting stories, and monitoring the news

[DrBubb]

Sustain the water cycle



2011-12-14 .. By Doug Meigs (HK Edition)

Two cyclists rode from England to Hong Kong, raising money and awareness for more than 2 billion people who lack clean freshwater and sanitation worldwide. Their adventure challenged conventional notions of philanthropy, crossing national boundaries and local water issues. Doug Meigs reports.

The water cyclists arrived at dusk. They crossed the Shenzhen border, pedaled through green mountains of the New Territories and descended into Kowloon's congested nocturnal glow. Hong Kong city lights signaled the end of an epic journey that began in Newbury, a town in southern England.

On the morning of Nov 15, cyclists Micheil Gordon, 25 and Jon Lee, 23, re-saddled their bicycles for the symbolic final leg of their odyssey to raise money and awareness for WaterAid. The duo navigated bustling Kowloon traffic on bicycles laden with gear. A jubilant crowd of managers, publicists and employees from their corporate sponsor LANXESS (a multinational chemicals conglomerate with an office in Hong Kong) cheered the cyclists across a finish line setup inside the Kowloon Cricket Club.

After nearly nine months covering a distance of 10,000 miles, Gordon and Lee had completed their mission to Hong Kong. They had cycled across 16 countries and raised 18,520.43 (roughly HK$230,000) for WaterAid. They estimated that the funds would assist 1,500 people to obtain a lifetime of safe drinking water and sanitation.

More than 2 billion people worldwide lack clean drinking water and sanitation, according to WaterAid. The NGO works with communities and national governments to provide facilities and policy frameworks for sustainable fresh water supplies in some of the world's most disadvantaged areas. Gordon and Lee became acquainted with the role of water in human social and economic mobility during an environmental science course at the University of Brighton, where they graduated in 2009.

"If you're always confined by water, restricted by a 20-mile walk to get water for your family, or if it makes you ill, then it restricts everything you do," Gordon said. "It restricts business, it restricts education," Lee added. "Young girls sent to collect water don't get to go to school. Basically without water, there's really no chance of moving forward," Gordon continued.



In Turkmenistan, they stopped to ask directions to a public toilet. "A man points to the river," Lee said. "The same river where one guy is already going to the toilet, another guy is washing his food, and still another guy is having a drink out of, with a dead dog floating past."

They tried to drink bottled water when it was available. Sometimes they had little choice. Gordon once suffered severe sunstroke and nearly lost consciousness. Lee stopped the passing traffic seeking water. "They would hand us an old bottle filled with river water. That is what they drank," he said.

In Uzbekistan, while riding through an arid desert, they encountered cotton fields irrigated by the rivers feeding the Aral Sea. "It would be green trees and cotton. Then you would cross a line, and it would literally be all dust, sand, dessert dry nothing," said Gordon. He was aware that the lush landscape resulted from the Aral Sea disaster a few hundred kilometers to the south, a textbook environmental catastrophe caused in the 1960s when the former Soviet Union diverted water to new farms in arid lands. Once one of the world's largest inland seas, the Aral Sea is now one tenth its former size, with ecosystems and fishing economies devastated.

Each of the cyclists carried nearly 18 liters of water on his bike, enough water for two days. In the remote deserts of Xinjiang and Qinghai, they rationed supplies. "Some of the places that we went through were just so dry that we wouldn't sweat," Gordon said. "There would not be a drop of water on us. And we're drinking 9 liters of water a day and not going to the toilet. That's a very strange feeling. The water just disappeared."

/more: http://www.chinadail...nt_14260681.htm
/site: http://hongkongcycle.co.uk

[DrBubb]

SEAWATER - Part of the solution ?

(From the same article):

In cities as diverse as London and Hong Kong, fresh water is only a tap away, while toilets empty on command into convenient sewage systems. Attaining such access to water and sanitation is a pivotal moment in any region's development, said Daniel Yeo, senior policy analyst (Climate Change and Water Security) from WaterAid's British headquarters.

"It is only when countries have achieved access to water and sanitation that their economies have really taken off," Yeo said. "Even here in London, about 150 years ago, we had the 'great stink'. The sanitation problem was so bad - waste overflowed in the Thames and the stench reached to Parliament (temporarily closing the House of Commons). Then the city revolutionized its sanitation and sewage system, and that was the tipping point for all the growth that has happened since, in London."

Water issues also plagued Hong Kong throughout its modernization. Water rationing was a constant reality of the 1950s as the urban population swelled. Residents made daily trips to obtain water for bathing, cooking and cleaning. The colonial government responded by constructing rainwater reservoirs, implementing saltwater toilet flushing, and importing water from the mainland. Hong Kong did not achieve consistent supply of ample freshwater until the 1980s. Ever since the 1990s, Guangdong's Dongjiang (East River) has satisfied 70-80 percent of Hong Kong's fresh water demand.

NOTE:
Folks in London may not know this:
80% of the "flush water" for toilets in HK is seawater.:
"Hong Kong is still the only city in the world using seawater for flushing on a city-wide scale."
HK is also experimenting with desalination technology

[Jake]

Great interview here with the author of 'Unquenchable'-Robert Glennon

http://twobeerswiths...-robert-glennon

[harold bishop]

DrBubb, on 02 February 2012 - 12:49 AM, said:

SEAWATER - Part of the solution ?

It is the only source of water for many developed and developing regions.  De-desalination is a major industry, often linked to power generation.   But, right now, it is a very power hungry process, so, generally only available to wealthy, coastal regions such as the Arabian Gulf, California, the Med etc.

Apart from the carbon emissions from the power used, desalination rejects the brine back to the sea.  With "closed" sea areas like the Med, the Gulf and the Red Sea, this slowly increases the natural salinity concentrations in the sea water, making future desalination operations more and more technically and financially expensive.

Parts of the Northern Arabian Gulf are reaching very high salinity levels due to the massive increase in extraction of "fresh" water and the drying up ( up stream farmland irrigation) of the fresh water, dilution, inputs from the Tigress and Euphrates rivers.

This coupled with some of the Gulf countries having the highest water consumption per capita puts a question mark over the long term growth plans of these countries.

Technologies to deliver "low energy" desalination and "zero brine" discharges will become extremely valuable.

The other source of water for many countries is ground water / well water.   These are highly susceptible to nitrate contamination by man from agricultural and sewage discharges.    You don't want high nitrate levels in your drinking water and they are very difficult to economically remove.

Ultimately, fresh water will, as it has always done, dictate the population concentration.

[DrBubb]

harold bishop, on 02 February 2012 - 08:41 AM, said:

Apart from the carbon emissions from the power used, desalination rejects the brine back to the sea.  With "closed" sea areas like the Med, the Gulf and the Red Sea, this slowly increases the natural salinity concentrations in the sea water, making future desalination operations more and more technically and financially expensive.

Parts of the Northern Arabian Gulf are reaching very high salinity levels due to the massive increase in extraction of "fresh" water and the drying up ( up stream farmland irrigation) of the fresh water, dilution, inputs from the Tigress and Euphrates rivers.

This coupled with some of the Gulf countries having the highest water consumption per capita puts a question mark over the long term growth plans of these countries.

That's a very interesting point, Harold.

Obviously, the countries on the open sea may have an advantage, or perhaps countries who are desalinating should be looking for creative uses for the "brine."

I do think that Middle Eastern countries are very short-sighted in building up living arrangements built on the notion that their energy resources will last almost forever, when it is clear that they will not.

I think more and more of us should look to live in a more sustainable way, to set an example for those around us.  And also to find those life-enriching ways to live that put less strain on the planet.

At its most basic level, you can just start by giving up the car, and eating less meat.  Then add on changes that move your living arrangement towards what is more sustainable.

Here's an example from my own life:
My partner and I have decided to move away from the edge of the sea, and to a higher elevation. We also want to have access to "mountain water", just in case it becomes difficult to get water through HK's main water system.

We have discovered there are two main choices:



1) We can live in a Village house on the side of one of HK's mountains, where most of the water comes from mountain streams and we can grow some of our own food in a small garden nearby. But transport will be a problem, and most of the neighbors in the village will not speak English, only Cantonese.



2) We can live in a Mid-rise on a high elevation (like over 500ft above sea-level.) There's a clubhouse with a gym and a wireless-connected working area.  And there are regular shuttle buses going down into the City for connecting transport and for shops and restaurants.

We were very much leaning towards #1 because of the availability of mountain water, and our expectation that the flush toilets in #2 were run off seawater, like most of HK.  I asked my partner to double-check this, since I thought there will be plenty of water in the streams around #2.  It turns out that they use mountain water for the flush toilets, and so there will be an alternate source of water, if we lose access to the mains.  That makes choice #2 much more viable.

This type of decision tree is nothing that I ever thought I would be concerned about. But in a world of future water shortage, it is worth taking more details into consideration.

[dooferdog]

Conservation

http://www.propelair...technology.html

[DrBubb]

dooferdog, on 02 February 2012 - 11:03 AM, said:

Conservation / Propelair WC

propelair ® is a totally new approach to WC operation. 5 years in development, it combines the convenience of a conventional WC with the water saving and performance benefits of air assisted flushing.

By using a unique application of Boyles Law, atmospheric air is displaced into the bowl to create the flush instead of precious water. This reduces the flushing volume to just 1.5 litres – an 84% saving compared with an average WC - and the poor performance associated with other reduced flushing volume WCs is avoided. Dual-flushing is not used.
http://www.propelair...technology.html

Yeah.
That can work too, alongside the Seawater-flush solution.
Here's another approach to conserving water:
Eat veggies instead of meat, and you can save enormous amounts of water

[Jake]

Timely article form the Japan Times

http://www.japantime...20120202mr.html

[DrBubb]

The critical date will arrive earlier in some locations

Jake, on 02 February 2012 - 01:56 PM, said:

Timely article form the Japan Times
http://www.japantime...20120202mr.html

Eventually not a drop of groundwater to drink?

By MICHAEL RICHARDSON
SINGAPORE — The world is in the midst of a boom in groundwater use. The rate of extraction from aquifers more than doubled in the 40 years to 2000. It has continued to soar since then.

Professor Craig Simmons, who directs Australia's National Center for Groundwater Research and Training, says as much as 40 percent of humanity's total water supply now comes from underground. It is not only used for drinking, but is also needed to grow food and support many industries.

Yet international water scientists are warning of a growing threat to groundwater supplies from over-extraction and from pollution by farm fertilizers, pesticides and mining residues. They say that major aquifers in some countries will start to run low by 2030 unless immediate steps are taken to better manage the resource.
. . .
A recent satellite study revealed falling groundwater tables in China, India, North Africa, the Middle East and United States, where expanding agriculture and cities have raised water demand.

Water shortage, particularly in northern China where Beijing is located, is emerging as one of the main constraints to Chinese growth. Underground water nourishes 40 percent of China's food and supplies 70 percent of its drinking water.

Water levels in aquifers in some regions are sinking by a meter or more a year. More than 650 Chinese cities have polluted and inadequate water supplies, both on the surface and, increasingly, underground as well.

In India, the world's second most-populous nation after China, the Central Ground Water Board has reported that in the 10 years to 2011, there has been a more than 4-meter decline in aquifers that supply six major cities, including the political capital, New Delhi, and the commercial capital, Mumbai.

[DrBubb]

DrBubb, on 02 February 2012 - 10:48 AM, said:

Here's an example from my own life:
My partner and I have decided to move away from the edge of the sea, and to a higher elevation. We also want to have access to "mountain water", just in case it becomes difficult to get water through HK's main water system.

We have discovered there are two main choices:



1) We can live in a Village house on the side of one of HK's mountains, where most of the water comes from mountain streams and we can grow some of our own food in a small garden nearby. But transport will be a problem, and most of the neighbors in the village will not speak English, only Cantonese.

My partner and I checked out some more village houses this weekend.


Here she is with the property owner - This place has its own water from the mountains.
But she wants to phone someone to find out if there are snakes nearby.


Here's another old place in the same village, waiting to be rebuilt.


The ones behind her are still being lived in. There's plenty of water to do the wash.


We were looking at a new house. All the water is free, thanks to the mountain.
And there's enough for plants in the garden too.


Some of the neighbors live well, thank you very much.

[harold bishop]

Ground water depletion and contamination is very real.  As you chase the aquifer water level down, you can end up with higher concentration of nasty stuff like heavy metals.  Arsenic in the ground water in areas of India is now very common.   Highish levels of nitrates are pretty grim too leading to depleted oxygen in you blood, blue babies and eventually kidney function problems.   Sudan is facing this.  The UN have been active in providing bore holes & pumps for villages away from the Nile and now they are facing elevated levels of kidney disease in young people.  I think the nitrates are in the ground water as a result of the cotton farming that took place of many decades.  In both cases, the water will look perfectly clean.

Remember,ground water knows no boundaries and slowly migrates great distances.  Industrial discharges to ground water will cross state and nation borders.

Bubb, the choice you are trying to make  is one that has faced many in the past.  My view is, in times of crises,  the city/urban areas ( the wealthy parts) will probably get the best in supplies of water, power & transport.   The urban sprawl will be cut off and be in real trouble.  The rural areas are, largely, already cut off even in good times.  So, they will survive as, the population density is low.  

In Germany in the hyper inflation times and in war, the rural areas pretty much carried on with barter systems, not only amongst themselves but with the city folk they supplied food to.   The problem is, the rural folk get robbed by starving urban from the cut off sprawls.

I think the trick is to be in a rural community that is within striking distance of a railway station.   And with enough of a garden to grow the bulk of your own fruit and veg.  Add in a few chickens for eggs and a bit of rabbit/pigeon/pheasant from the fields and life can be pretty good.  In fact, it is quite possible and very healthy to operate your life like this in the good times.  

I will add one rider to all of this: for this to work, you really need to be debt free and own your own house.

Edit:  This was written based on the UK were it rains a lot and if needed, ground water is plentiful and generally very good.  For HK or other, drier, regions, water supply, water storage and water treatment and recycling will be priority.  All of these can be achieved on an individual household basis or small community basis.

Bubb, is it possible to buy a piece of land and build new ?  Buying those older houses will mean a lot of work to improve them.

[DrBubb]

harold bishop, on 05 February 2012 - 09:25 AM, said:

Bubb, the choice you are trying to make  is one that has faced many in the past.  My view is, in times of crises,  the city/urban areas ( the wealthy parts) will probably get the best in supplies of water, power & transport.   The urban sprawl will be cut off and be in real trouble.  The rural areas are, largely, already cut off even in good times.  So, they will survive as, the population density is low.  
. . .
I think the trick is to be in a rural community that is within striking distance of a railway station.   And with enough of a garden to grow the bulk of your own fruit and veg.  Add in a few chickens for eggs and a bit of rabbit/pigeon/pheasant from the fields and life can be pretty good.  In fact, it is quite possible and very healthy to operate your life like this in the good times.  

I will add one rider to all of this: for this to work, you really need to be debt free and own your own house.

Good tips. Thanks for that.

The place we have in mind is a very short walk from a minibus stop.

We think the density may be about right.  Enough that we are not a solitary target for burglaries, and low enough that much of the food and water to feed the villagers could conceivably come locally - I can imagine it being close to self-sustaining.

We will not think about buying until we are sure we like it there, and have sold our last city-based property.

Chickens are not allowed in HK now because of the threat of avian flu.  But an exception has been made for Kadoorie Farm, which is walking distance away, and sells eggs.
=== === ===

(Here are two videos about Food for a time of Emergency. Turn your sound down for #1):

Ten Top foods


25 Top foods


Comment from the first video
=======
You need lay off the sugar or caffine. 10 things you need:
1. Rice 2. Soup beans 3. Garden 4. Pond full of fish. 5 gasoline 6. Water 7. First aid 8. Fence in yard 9 guns and ammo
10. Supply of beer to get drunk and forget your problems.
Plus you are too young to even know what you need. Too many you will need. Like solar energy.chickens.gold

(if you need a car or gasoline, you're already in trouble IMHO)

[DrBubb]

Lake Vostok drilling complete: Earth's oldest super-clean water system reached

On the first of this month it was reported that scientists were about to complete a 30 year drilling expedition to hit a 20-million-year-old lake: this week they’ve reached the surface. This body of water called Vostok is Antarctica’s largest subglacial lake and is believed by scientists to be “the only giant super-clean water system on the planet.” This body of water could contain life and give us Earth-shattering information on our past, excuse the pun, or it could contain an environment unlike anything we’ve experienced before. If either result turns out to be true, we’ll gain insight on “alien” lakes like those we’ve found already on Jupiter’s moon Europa. Thirty years of drilling and the research portion of the expedition can begin!

/more: http://www.slashgear...ached-06212292/

[Jake]

http://newswatch.nat...allala-aquifer/

A group of farmers in northwest Texas began 2012 under circumstances their forbearers could scarcely imagine: they faced a limit on the amount of groundwater they could pump from their own wells on their own property.


In Texas, a bastion of the free-market Tea Party, such a rule is hard to fathom.  Most of the state abides by the “rule of capture,” which basically allows farmers to pump as much water as they want from beneath their own land.  But irrigators in northwest Texas rely on the Ogallala aquifer, an underground water reserve that is all-too-rapidly disappearing.  If the region is to have any future at all, water users must find a way to curb the pumping.

The Ogallala is one of the nation’s largest and most productive underground water sources.   It makes up more than three-quarters of the High Plains aquifer, which spans 175,000 square miles and underlies parts of eight U.S. states — Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming.  Water drawn from it irrigates 15.4 million acres of cropland, 27 percent of the nation’s total irrigated area.

Since 1949, the area under irrigation has risen more than five-fold.  Groundwater withdrawals rose in tandem, resulting in a large-scale and ongoing depletion of this critical water reserve.



Even more worrisome, the draining of the High Plains water account has picked up speed.  The average annual depletion rate between 2000 and 2007 was more than twice that during the previous fifty years. The depletion is most severe in the southern portion of the aquifer, especially in Texas, where the water table beneath sizeable areas has dropped 100-150 feet; in smaller pockets, it has dropped more than 150 feet.

Unfortunately, that water is not coming back any time soon.  The Ogallala filled slowly during the Ice Age tens of thousands of years ago.  The southern portions get very little recharge today.

“[I]n less than 100 years we are seriously depleting what took Nature more than 10,000 years to fill,” said USGS director Marcia McNutt.

[halight]

Severe drought could blight Britain in the summer after driest winter on record, experts warnHosepipe bans likely without heavy rainfall in the near future
2011 was the driest year in England and Wales for 90 years
Fears of knock on effects for farmers, tourism and local wildlife


Britain is facing a severe drought this summer after the driest winter on record, experts have warned.

Without heavy rainfall in the immediate future, extreme water shortages could hit many parts of the country - causing parched landscapes, rivers drying up and hosepipe bans in the summer.
Such conditions would


Read more: http://www.dailymail...l#ixzz1mHpOJek9



Please read more at website.

[Jake]

http://www.japantime...20120207ht.html
Japan's most prominent critic of high-rise living is Fumio Aisaka, a Tokai University instructor who published a study in 1994 suggesting that pregnant women living above the 6th floor were three times more likely to suffer miscarriages or stillbirths than pregnant women living on the first or second floor. Though Aisaka's research was commissioned by the health ministry, it was mostly ignored, and in his 2010 book, "Scary: High-Rise Condominium Stories," he writes that he occasionally receives anonymous threatening phone calls to stop publishing.

Aisaka also found that housewives living in tall buildings interact less with their neighbors, and that kids go outdoors less than those living in other types of residences.


The promotional literature says that the building has storage rooms on nine different floors, but that they don't include food, only equipment such as hard hats, portable toilets and rope.

the salesman did provide us with an iPad that displayed re-creations of the view one would get from any of the floors. "If you look this way," the salesman said, tapping the screen, "you can see Tokyo Disneyland clearly."

Sunlight can be very intense during certain times of the day.

• Wind becomes stronger the higher the floor.

• Due to reflection off building surfaces, street sounds become louder the higher up you go.

• For structural reasons, walls tend to be thinner on higher floors and thus less sound-proof.

• Greater mental stress can be caused by long waits for elevators and a general feeling of inconvenience when getting ready to go outside.

• Residents living on lower floors can develop neuroses( ) due to the perception that all the building's weight is on top of them.

[DrBubb]

Perhaps Japanese women are more "delicate" than Chinese women?

[Jake]

DrBubb, on 14 February 2012 - 09:05 AM, said:

Perhaps Japanese women are more "delicate" than Chinese women?

Maybe so.


Here's more about tall structures (and quakes) from todays Japan Times.

"An adjacent building was swaying so hard that I feared it might hit our building," another respondent said.

Numerous people in the upper levels of high-rises in Tokyo felt symptoms akin to sea-sickness, according to the survey.

The Meteorological Agency panel also found that even those inside tall buildings constructed on firm stratum in western Tokyo felt the amplified shaking. More than 50 percent of people above the 20th floor of Kogakuin University in Shinjuku Ward found it difficult to remain on their feet, the survey showed.

Elevators in high-rise buildings located as far away as Osaka also shut down due to the nature of the long-period ground motion.''

This was a mere 6.0 in Tokyo. God help them if they have anything bigger than that in the Tokyo vicinity. Many experts are saying within the next 4 years.

[DrBubb]

After the Japan quake, no wonder they fear them



Returning to low rise living, in the countryside may be a real option for some in a country with a shrinking population base



Part of the description:
Yokosawa village is typical of the mountain communities of the Southern Alps in central Japan; most of which are situated in a setting of stunning natural beauty and inhabited by families who can trace their lineage into Japan's distant past. However, like other mountain communities in this area, Yokosawa's population is rapidly declining as young people move away to escape the perceived difficulties of rural life and to chase the glitter and dreams of urban Japan. After the old people are gone many homes are then left empty, often being abandoned by families who are unable to sell the property in a market with no buyers. Such homes slowly fall into disrepair or are abandoned altogether, often being reclaimed by nature and disappearing into the encroaching forest.

Visitors to Yokosawa will be charmed by the magical sense of peace and quiet which pervades the area, yet simultaneously unsettled by the notable absence of people. What I find most disturbing in such places is the conspicuous absence of children, from the empty playgrounds, abandoned school houses and even the laundry lines which carry only the shirts, pants and skirts of old men and old women. Farmers who have left the mountains and who reside in the city often complain that they miss the sounds of the hills: cascading water, the hum of insects and the warble of songbirds.

Perhaps Japan needs to re-invent Village Life, and make it more appealing to the young.  They can be a leader in this (important) trend