From Sea To Shining Sea

…And all the rivers and lakes in between

Pure water - Drinking water - With air, as Jacques Cousteau has been often quoted, “the two essential fluids, on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.”
We have seen the “Hubbard Peak” for oil described as the point in time at which the supply of oil begins to decline until, at the end, the supply is gone. (See our blog #3 “The Learning Curve and the Hubbert Peak” Jan 24, 2009)

We cannot imagine that the supply of water would ever be “used up.” After all, water covers 71 percent of the earth. The question is whether the supply of clean, drinkable, water would decrease while a world population continues to increase.

We will talk about the world-wide water situation later. Now we are looking at conditions in the United States and along the border with Canada.

Every day the US consumes, on average, some 345 Billion gallons of fresh water. That amount of water would cover the entire state of Rhode Island to a depth of one foot! And the breakdown of that figure is interesting – and important

136 Billion gallons go to irrigation
136 Billion go to electric power plants
47 Billion go to public and domestic supply
26 Billion for industrial use.

Of the public and domestic category about half goes to the domestic or home use. That works out to be about 75 gallons a day per person at home.

All this is based on a current US population of 303,824,640 in mid 2008. The population figure is expected to increase at the rate of 0.88% per year (accounting for births and deaths).

Using this data, by the year 2020 the US will need an additional 2,535,375,234 gallons of good water per day. And this does not account for any increase in agriculture needed to support the increased number of people.

Clearly the world faces a possible shortage of water due to increased population, uneven supplies of clean water and other factors. In our next report we will discuss some of the solutions as they apply in the US, Canada and around the world.

Here again, there is hope if proper action is taken.