Preview

Clean Water Crisis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
670 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Clean Water Crisis
Clean Water Crisis/Scarcity For decades, providing clean water to the masses has been a goal. Even with the “Millennium Declaration”, a goal proposed by the United Nations to provide clean water sources to everyone in the world by 2020, many people will go without clean water supplies. Can you imagine living in a region where there are struggles to get a glass of clean water. It seems so distant to us living in modern industrialized America, yet this concept is completely taken for granted in everyday life. We simply forget the means as to how we have gotten this necessity of life delivered to our kitchen sink. This is nonetheless relevant in today’s world. Unless you are one of the unfortunate countries or regions in which there is limited supplies of water and the water that is present is stagnant or so contaminated with bacteria and other minerals that it literally makes you sick from dysentery by simply drinking one glass. Letsfirst look at the public water supply in area's with scarce resources. With a population of well over 120 million people less than 30% of Nigeria has access to safe drinking water(Nigeria). Ingestion of unsafe drinking water can result in spreadable disease. In fact, in India, 21% of all spreadable disease is due to a lack of safe water, and diarrhea alone causes more than 1,600 deaths daily(India). Worldwide 1 out of every 4 deaths under the age of 5 is due to a water-related disease (water). The niger river which once flowed freely though Africa has been being used to produce hydro-electric power out of the Akosombodam. According to BBC news, Nigeria is dependent on this river and the river is now facing environmental catastrophe as a result of pollution". The United States is affected much less than other parts of the world at this time. Although if we do not change something soon we may end up like some of the worlds less fortunate counties. California has been in a drought since 2006. Our own Lexington reservoir is down

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    “Water is crucial for the well-being of people. Due to industrialization, growing population , illiteracy the provision of safe drinking water will undergo global indust in near future”(pg. 599, para 5).…

    • 2582 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    From apartheid to epidemics such as aids or tuberculosis, South Africa has experienced several disasters. Now it has to face a new crisis: an abundance of drinkable water. In fact there is several reasons to explain this water crisis. Firstly, the climate change has affected the water supply as rain has become increasingly scarce. For instance “in Durban the dams are 20 per cent lower than at the start of 2010”. (the water projet) Moreover, the problem of pollution rages; in fact, mining plants in South Africa throw all their toxic and radioactive waste in African rivers. They dump highly toxic substances such as mercury, arsenic and uranium in the river, as it is toxic and reacts violently with water, once in it the water will be contaminated. The water will therefore have a highly acidic pH of 2.2 (pH level close to that of a lemon). For instance, Wonderfontein Spruit River, one of the largest rivers in South Africa is extremely polluted due to the 50 tons of uranium mining plants have dumped into the river. Likewise, Lake Robinson, a fishing lake,…

    • 1403 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Water is a life resource for everyone. A situation between a drought and our resources being in danger with shortages of water in the region, is something that should not be trifled with. The state of California plunged into its third year of being affected by a record breaking drought. (Global Risk Insight) The Sacramento region was in desperate need of water this winter, with the high record of 52 winter days without rain (Sacramento Bee: Weather Report). Generally, the average time for rainfall encloses the time from late November to Mid April; and the months of the most rainfall occurs December through February.(Department of Water Resources) As parts of the country get drier, the amount of water availability will most likely decrease. The drought of 2014 is being noted as the most dangerous and driest drought California has ever seen.…

    • 1803 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Water

    • 1027 Words
    • 5 Pages

    BYLINE: Kevin Watkins SECTION: COMMENT; Pg. 32 LENGTH: 923 words The rich world must act to prevent dirty water and poor sanitation now killing more than a million children a year Halving the proportion of the world without access to clean water would cost a month's bottled water in Europe and the US Nobody reading this started the day with a two-mile hike to collect the family's daily water supply from a stream. None of us will suffer the indignity of using a plastic bag for a toilet. And our children don't die for want of a glass of clean water. Perhaps that's why we have such a narrow view of what constitutes a "water crisis". Dwindling reservoirs and a few ministerial exhortations to flush the toilet less often, and we've got a national emergency on our hands. Hold the front page, there could be a hosepipe ban in the home counties. In the next 24 hours diarrhoea caused by unclean water and poor sanitation will claim the lives of 4,000 children. The annual death toll from this relentless catastrophe is larger than the population of Birmingham. Dirty water poses a greater threat to human life than war or terrorism. Yet it barely registers on the radar of public debate in rich countries. At any one time, close to half the population of the developing world is suffering from water-related diseases. These rob people of their health, destroy their livelihoods, and undermine education potential. The statistics behind the crisis make for grim reading. In the midst of an increasingly prosperous global economy, 2.6 billion people still have no access to even the most rudimentary latrine. Over one billion have no source of drinking water.…

    • 1027 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    water privatization

    • 534 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In developing countries where this has already happened, people are often forced to use unclean, disease-infested sources because that is the only water that is free. According to the World Health Organization, over 3.5 billion cases of diarrheal disease occur every year as a result of unsafe water. Of these, 1.8 million people die annually, the majority children under five. If privatization of the world's fresh water supply continues unhindered, these numbers will increase dramatically.…

    • 534 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Collectively the United States is ranked as the greatest consumers of water worldwide; a startling fact for a country that cannot support its own unrivaled demands (Barlow, 2007). The United States is now crucially dependent on nonrenewable groundwater for a staggering 50% of its daily water usage (Barlow, 2007). In addition to such formidable numbers, citizens of the United States use and waste up 80-100 gallons or 454 liters of water per day (Perlman, 2009). The United States simply doesn’t possess enough fresh water or renewable sources of water to keep up with its gross demands. Nearly 40% of U.S waters are deemed unsafe for recreational activities such as fishing and even swimming (Barlow, 2007). The Ogallala Aquifer accounts for 95% of the United State’s groundwater, but it is being pumped so rapidly, that not enough rainwater is provided the chance to replenish the source. As a result 12 billion cubic meters (bcm) a year is extracted a year which amounts to 325 bcm of total depletion; equal to the yearly flow of eighteen Colorado Rivers (BBC, 2000). At the current rates, thirty-six states stand to confront similar water crisis compared to California within the next five years (Barlow, 2007). As, the United States water crisis continues to spiral violently downhill, its neighbor, Canada has already quickly followed this American trend.…

    • 822 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    There is on impact on people when they don’t have clean water. 783 million people do not have clean or safe drinking water worldwide. Out of the 783 million people 319 million of them do not have access to a reliable drinking source. 2.4 billion people don’t have sanitation facilities which can cause poor hygiene and lead to infectious and tropical diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa. 80% of illnesses are because of water and poor hygiene. 443 million school days are lost because of water-related diseases. Less than three people in Sub-Saharan Africa have use to a proper toilet. 84% of the people who cannot access clean water, live in rural areas. About 1 out of 5 deaths under the age of five is because of dirty water.…

    • 127 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Globally, more people have access to cellphones than sanitary water to drink. Even though seventy-five percent of the world's surface is water, ninety-seven percent is salt water and isn't drinkable. Out of the three percent left, two percent is frozen in glaciers so that leaves the last one percent for transport, cooling and heating, drinking and other daily activities. One in ten people lack access to clean, drinkable water. Not only do many people lack sanitary water, around one hundred sixty million drink the unsanitary water and become very sick. Although the water that they drink will make them very sick women and children will walk around 6 hours a day getting unsanitary water. The water crisis is the number one problem in society. Although many solutions are out there they…

    • 636 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Kenya Water Crisis

    • 1877 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Poor planning, mismanagement and lack of technical skills have led to constant water shortages in a place otherwise endowed with enough water resources. As a result of poor or lack of treatment by the water departments, the water being consumed is raw and contaminated. And according to Hydro Watch, a Non-Governmental Organization dealing with water and sanitation in Kenya, ten people die every day as a result of contaminated water consumption in the country, mostly children who are often caught drawing water from leaking sewages.…

    • 1877 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Studies of the World Water Commission and other international agencies show that billions of people on our planet are living without the bare minimum of health conditions. Millions of persons have no access to drinking water. Given these serious problems, several diseases such as diarrhea, hepatitis and many others are spread.…

    • 922 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The World Health Organization estimates that over a billion people lack access to purified drinking water and the vast majority of these people are living in rural areas. The low population density…

    • 1496 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Humanity's Right to Water

    • 3944 Words
    • 16 Pages

    Throughout much of the developing world, the absence of clean drinking water is a common sight. Hence, it is particularly noticeable of how the need for safe and sanitary water impacts people’s quality of life. In accordance to the World Health Organization, approximately 1.2 billion people worldwide do not have access to clean drinking water, and a further 2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation services. Moreover, these numbers are expected to rise. The United Nations have estimated that by the year 2025, 2.8 billion people in 48 countries will be living in conditions of water stress and scarcity. As for now, millions of people living in water shortage and sanitation situations are affected by a wide range of water-borne diseases. Inadequate water is accountable for one tenth of the world’s disease burden, and that six…

    • 3944 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Global Water Crisis Africa

    • 1582 Words
    • 5 Pages

    It was a four hour journey and most of the woman and children walked that twice a day. Just imagine getting up before dawn to make this long journey to get a bucket of water filled with a little water, dirt, algae, cow and goat feces, bacteria, mosquito larvae and other insect eggs, parasites, and various waterborne diseases waiting for a host. They have no time for anything else in the scalding-hot heat of the afternoon. What they carried was liquid that was at conflict with themselves. With no other options but this, the muddy water could make them sick with the various diseases that lay rampant in this liquid poison. How can it be that Africa, among other countries in the world, has no access to the purest elements there is; water? They hang on by a simple thread praying for a miracle, while often dying, for something as simple as clean drinking water. Although the water crisis in Africa is acute and its effects are devastating, there are many organizations trying to raise awareness and find viable solutions.…

    • 1582 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    ABCD is a trapezium such that AB and CD are parallel and BC ^ CD. If –ADB = q, BC = p and CD = q,…

    • 2333 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation and is home to an estimated one hundred and sixty-seven million people. It is a country that receives a relatively high level of annual rainfall which is not distributed evenly through time or space. Because of these variations in time and space, people in different parts of Nigeria use water in different ways. For example, in the drier northern parts of Nigeria where rainfall is lower and less evenly distributed throughout the year, efforts have been made to develop irrigation. Down south, the rainfall is more abundant and supplies the teeming population who use it as a source of portable water.…

    • 1407 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays