Halloween Edition: Scary Water Facts and Why Water and Wastewater Treatment Matters

Happy Friday everyone!  In honor of Halloween, I wanted to do a "scary" post.  After a little googling of various combinations of "wastewater" "water treatment" "Halloween" and "scary", I realized I'd have to be a little more creative.  Apparently there's not a lot of haunted wastewater treatment plants out there (except for this one...click for link).  

Halloween is about being a bit scared, so I thought I'd share some of the more "scary" water facts.  A lot of times we're all caught up in the every day treatment processes that we're not thinking about why we're doing what we're doing - why we show up for work and make sure everything is working properly.  Here's a reminder of the scarcity of water and the importance of it's treatment.

• 884 million people lack access to safe water supplies; approximately one in eight people.
• The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns. (www.water.org)
  
• Water is a $400 billion dollar global industry; the third largest behind electricity and oil. (CBS News)
• California's water supply is running out - it has about 20 years of water left in the state.
  (Maude Barlow, author of Blue Covenant and co-author of Blue Gold, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians)
  
• There are over 116,000 human-made chemicals that are finding their way into public water supply systems.
  (William Marks, author of Water Voices from Around the World)
• There is a 50 percent chance that Lake Mead, which was created by the Hoover Dam and the Colorado River, will go dry by 2021 because of escalating human demand and climate change. By 2017, there is a 50 percent chance that the reservoir could drop so low that Hoover Dam could no longer produce hydroelectric power. 
• 3.575 million people die each year from water-related disease.
• More than 80% of sewage in developing countries is discharged untreated, polluting rivers, lakes and coastal areas.
• The UN estimates that by 2025, forty-eight nations, with combined population of 2.8 billion, will face freshwater “stress” or “scarcity”. 
• Every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease. 
• 1.6 billion live in areas where there is water, but they can't afford to drink it.
• "A shortage of water resources could spell increased conflicts in the future. Population growth will make the problem worse. So will climate change. As the global economy grows, so will its thirst. Many more conflicts lie just over the horizon." (current Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon)

Water is the most important human necessities.  We need it to live, and there's a finite amount of it available.  The work that we all do in water and wastewater treatment plants is one of the most important processes that continues to sustain human life.  With the potential water crises that lie on the horizon, this will become more and more apparent.  If we don't clean it, we can't use it, and we need it to live.  Scary, but true.

Sources:
http://www.multipure.com/blog/node/19
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9925900-54.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9870349-54.html?tag=mncol;txt
http://water.org/learn-about-the-water-crisis/facts/
http://www.businessinsider.com/15-facts-about-the-coming-water-crisis-2010-3