Freshwater Resources Tapped Out By Peter Gleick Essays

Freshwater Resources: Tapped Out By Peter Gleick The article being discussed was entitled Tapped Out and was written by Peter Gleick. It focuses on the depleting supply of our Earths freshwater resources. How it effects the human population, and how the problem will develop in years to come. The question being asked is will we be able to sustain enough freshwater to satisfy all the worlds needs? And what will we do about the present lack of clean freshwater in many underdeveloped countries all around the world. The reason why is quite obvious. We need to reevaluate our distribution of freshwater, and find a way to conserve and preserve it for generations to come. An astounding half of the worlds population lives with out an adequate supply of clean water. Think of all the ways that Americans use water everyday. We have the advantages of taking showers, doing laundry, cooking, cleaning, or washing our cars. In other places in the world people dont even have a clean glass of water to drink let alone cook or clean with. Ten to twenty thousand children die everyday of preventable water related diseases, and the latest evidence shows that we are lagging in the effort to solve these problems. The average person doesnt realize what people without running water go through. Carrying water for miles and miles from a well just to boil a pot of water over a fire, and who is to say that the water is clean. One billion people suffer from lack of a clean water supply. Two and a half billion do not have adequate sanitation services in their homes or around them. Rivers and streams that may have once provided a water source have now been contaminated and are no longer useful for drinking or cooking with. Most of the time people are forced to drink brackish or arsenic contaminated water. Millions of people in Bangladesh and India drink water with arsenic in it everyday. Other problems with water sanitation include diseases, such as cholera. The last massive cholera outbreak was in Latin America, Asia, and Africa during the mid 1990s. However thanks to improvements and advances in sanitation this disease has mostly been wiped out. Another factor in these developments is a greater awareness of how to conserve and recycle water. Since the 1980s demand for water has actually gone down due to awareness. Individuals and communities are better equipped to save water and they have learned to be less wasteful. The focus has returned to concentrating on basic needs for the human population and the environment. Even though there are serious efforts being made to create water for everyone experts are not sure if the water supply can keep up with a population that is growing as fast as ours is. It has been estimated that by 2025 forty percent of a population numbering 7.2 million may face serious problems if only natural sources are available to them. Agriculture, industry, and general human health will be challenged by high demand. Even though we are at a point where the water supply is being sustained surging future populations around the world are already putting stress on a limited supply. The article also states that human health is not the only thing in danger. By creating dams, and canals damage is caused to animal and human habitat. By far the most casualties have been in the numbers of fish. Populations of freshwater and saltwater fish have been greatly effected. In the United States alone 95% of the juvenile salmon population did not survive the migration to the ocean because of dams and reservoirs along the Colombia and Snake Rivers. The population of Atlantic Salmon has fallen to less than one percent of its original number. The major factor was the 900 or so dams on New England and European rivers that block them from their reproduction grounds. Although more drastic than any other situation is the one in the Aral Sea which is located in central Asia. The two main rivers that flow into it (Amu Darya and Syr Darya) have been diverted to irrigate cotton, and the sea can no longer be sustained. As a result the twenty-four species of