Freshwater is used for public water supplies, irrigation, industrial processes, and cooling electric power plants (OECD, 2013). The average family of four uses about six hundred liters of water per day (Porteous, 2000). The concern is if the freshwater supply is not protected and conserved, the planet will run out and if this happens the planet will not survive. Approximately seventy five percent of the Earth’s surface is covered in water, as oceans, rivers, glaciers, snow or lakes (Singh, 2008). Singh reports that “Only three percent of water globally is potable (drinkable) and, of that amount, approximately thirty percent is available for use and most of it is located in Brazil” (Singh, 2008).
Unfortunately, Brisbane residents are unable to conserve water without restrictions, which is why the restrictions system is utilized by local government. Brisbane residents have lived with level 6 water restrictions for the past 2 years and as they have been so limited there will undoubtedly be a self indulgent splurge by almost ever house hold. The dams won’t be able to handle the rush and it will only result in short term gain for long term loss. On level 6 water restrictions, the parameters for water use are 140 liters per person per day. At 40 per cent of the reserves, water restrictions will be reduced to level 3 which is 170 liters per person per day.
The United States consumes roughly 600 billion cubic meters of natural gas every year while we only produce about 500 billion cubic meters. ANWR could hold trillions of cubic meters of uncovered natural gas. North America is said to contain 3 percent of the world’s natural gas (naturalgas.org). Natural gas has been discovered in the north Alaskan region but it has been said that it is only the tip of the iceberg and that there is much more to be found. According to a spokesman there is some eight billion cubic feet of natural gas is drawn from existing fields in the ANWR every single day that is re-injected into the ground because there is no pipeline to carry the gas to the United States or Canada (Nationalgeographic.com).
Increasing urbanisation, growing population, and developing economies are all increasing demand for clean water and the rise in demand is now exceeding supply. This has created conflict between differing stakeholders (someone with financial or emotional interest in an area) within states, countries, and even on a global scale. This is now also causing substantial impact on water geopolitics. The Colorado River is the most heavily used source of irrigation water in the USA. The Colorado Compact was created in 1922 to establish rights between states.
There has been increasing awareness and concern for environmental implications over the ever growing bottled water industry. Concerns like; solid waste contribution to our countries landfills, the effect on water scarcity in source locations, and the vast amounts of oil expended and forever depleted from the production and transportation of water bottles across the country. Further contributions to environmental degradation include chemical leakage into our earth and its groundwater systems as well as the overall input to green house gases. This issue effects 130 countries directly and all others indirectly. But as the top consumer of bottled water, nowhere is that effect more pronounced then in America.
We are losing more and more water. Water is the one of the most essential elements known to life. Without it, there wouldn’t be any. It is estimated that California has only enough water in storage for the next 12 to 18 months. 60 percent of our water supply comes from the snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada Mountains, providing drinking water for 22 million people and over 600,000 acres of farmland.
In some fracturing jobs—like those in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and New York—more than 40,000 gallons of fracturing chemicals, with no company disclosure of the chemical constituents, can be used at a single well. Because the process is exempt from most federal oversight, it is overseen by state agencies that are spread thin and have widely varying regulations. A recent report by the Ground Water Protection Council revealed that only four of the 31 drilling states it surveyed have regulations that directly address hydraulic fracking and that no state requires companies to track the volume of chemicals left underground. One in five states doesn't require the concrete casing used to contain wells to be tested before hydraulic fracking. Approximately one‐third of the millions of gallons of water used in fracking returns to the surface, where it is either reused or trucked to treatment plants.
This is a less important human cause as it doesn’t affect how quickly water reaches the river. With large floods, no matter how well the rivers are dredged, it is still likely floods would occur. A physical cause of the Somerset level floods is that they occurred over winter months, but soil moisture recharge had already occurred in October. Any excess rainfall after October would be surplus and would not infiltrate. This was not helped by the fact there were 8 storms in just 2 months.Also, over 407 years there have been 4 major floods, the frequency being 101.5 years per flood.
Welville Water Welville Water Water Facts and Trivia * Groundwater can take a human lifetime just to traverse a mile. * Most of the earth's surface water is permanently frozen or salty. * Water regulates the earth's temperature. * Water freezes at zero degrees Celsius. * Water vaporizes at a hundred degrees Celsius.
• Purpose : The purpose of this lab is to show the Human Impact on Groundwater. • Introduction : The Earth's surface is more than 70% water, however under 1% of the water on Earth is viewed as open, usable freshwater for supporting people's and other creatures' lives. Of the available freshwater, more or less 99% is situated in aquifers, normal underground water loads, and other groundwater sources. Lamentably, people are draining the aquifers speedier than they can be revived by the hydrological cycle. Along these lines, seventy five percent of groundwater is viewed as nonrenewable.