Living in New England it’s hard to get people to stop long enough to think about water conservation and water quality as a critical issues. There seems to be plenty of water here. But in reality, there isn’t an infinite amount of clean water and our rivers are still being polluted by combined sewer overflows, urban run-off and littering. Household chemicals, fertilizers, antibiotics and organic pollutants find their way into surface and ground waters and this problem needs to be addressed at several levels. Some pollution comes from industrial and agricultural sources, but a lot of it comes from individuals and the EPA lists many ways citizens can help protect our bodies of water from pollution.
On the conservation end we spent a lot of energy heating water so we can take hot showers, run our washing machines and dishwashers and in general use a lot more water than necessary. Because there’s no critical and immediate need for conservation, the “conserve water, drink beer” slogan sums up our efforts in minimizing water use. I am an offender in the worst way - while I only turn on the dishwasher when it’s full, never run the tap unnecessarily and wash most of my clothes in cold water (and generally consider my lifestyle environmentally friendly), I love long hot showers! Particularly after swim practice, when the hot water just feels so good and shower time is spent catching up on team gossip.
Other parts of the world aren’t this lucky and one doesn’t need to leave this country in order to realize that clean water is a precious commodity (just go to the Southwest). Anyway, the UN declared today, 3/22/07, World Water Day in an effort to draw attention to the increasing water scarcity on the planet.