Margaret's points about water and climate change are?excellent.?Even where water seems abundant (for now) water conservation is always vital. The world as a whole faces a very severe water crisis?from drought and from?increasingly toxic water, as is of course known. In The?Great Turning, David Korten?mentioned a UNICEF statistic that some 400+ million children around the world lack access to safe water.???
Conserving water is a responsiblity not only to our own changing situation but a responsibility to the world, especially to the most vulnerable. Jeanne -----Original Message----- From: Margaret McCasland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sustainable Tompkins County listserv <[email protected]> Sent: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 5:00 pm Subject: Re: [SustainableTompkins] why save water? I am more concerned about the chemicals and "embodied energy" in shampoos etc and in their packaging than I am with water per se--now that I am back on city water. And of course the energy used to heat water matters. But we are very lucky here in the city of Ithaca; most of the city's water is surface water on its way to the lake via gravity, all it does is take a detour through our houses. (However it is getting contaminated on the way.) So water per se isn't the issue. But effects on the lake do matter. All those chemicals add up once they get to the lake, where they concentrate over time. Cayuga is too deep to "flush" much of its water to the ocean (via the St. Lawrence). the Cayuga Watershed folks know more about this than I do. For folks on wells, water may become an issue even around here. I still own a house in the Town of Ithaca with wells, and the water table seems to be dropping there; there is lots more sediment than ever before (like from the bottom of my wells). I blame it on climate change. Global warming may mean more snow around here (warmer lakes mean more lake effect snow), but the snow doesn't stay around for long; the temperature keeps going above freezing. But in winter, the melting snow doesn't soak into frozen ground to recharge the ground water. In the good old days in rural areas (say, over 10 years ago--I've lived here since 1964), snow that fell in late fall was usually still around until April. There might be a January and/or February thaw when a lot of snow melted and ran straight to the creeks, but most of the snow pack melted gradually as the ground thawed and soaked into the ground, recharging the aquifers. But we don't really have "snow pack" anymore, so we;re getting more runoff and less recharge. Likewise, spring rains were gentle and frequent and a lot of the rain soaked into the ground. And parts of most summers were wet enough to do some more recharging, especially in the cloudy "Greater Ithaca" area. But now we have hotter, dryer springs, summers and falls. More "rain events" with lots of water in a short time, but when the ground has dried out between "events," most of the rain runs off and causes floods, rather than recharging the aquifers. Think how absorbent a very dry sponge is, versus how much more water you can get into a slightly damp sponge. So the amount of rain and snow that falls could stay the same (or even increase) and yet ground water levels could fall. Unfortunately a likely scenario in our climate-changed world, even here in Ithaca. Margaret >marlo capoccia wrote: >> i'm curious as about why water conservation is important in an area >> like ours. the only reason i can think of is to reduce the amount of >> energy and chemistry used to clean the water to return it to the >> lake. > >Yep. My household water is pumped up from Bolton Point to the NYSEG >building before flowing down here, then for a shower it gets heated, and >then what's used flows down into the City of Ithaca's sewers. Less >water use means less pumping, heating, and sewage processing. > >(The Village of Dryden has to replace its sewer plant - a ~$5 million >project. Ouch! And septic tanks are their own set of challenges.) > >My garden water comes from a 270' well, though it doesn't require sewer, >and I'm planning on looking into rainwater collection because I have to >put new gutters on the house anyway. > >> is there something more here? even when our water tables were >> high in this area people spoke about the importance of conservation, >> so i get the feeling it isn't about the amount of water available. > >Drought's not a frequent problem here, but it does happen some years. >Wells can be especially tricky. > >Yes, it's more important to refrain from dumping used motor oil in the >ditch than to refrain from taking showers, but these aren't bad habits >to develop. > >Thanks, >Simon St.Laurent >http://livingindryden.org/ >_______________________________________________ >RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: >[email protected] >http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins >free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org _______________________________________________ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org _______________________________________________ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
