Reduce Your Water Footprint: Less Is More!
Just as clean water preserves health, water conservation also protects health, by ensuring that water will be available when it is needed, now and in the future.
While looking out the window on a rainy and blustery day, many people naturally long for a quick return of sunshine. Put simply – we often don't appreciate how important water is in our everyday lives until we either don't have any or we are running dangerously low.
Each year in mid April, the National Environmental Education Foundation sponsors National Environmental Education Week to promote understanding and protection of the natural world with a week of environmental learning and service leading up to Earth Day on April 22. The theme for National Environmental Education Week (April 13-17) in 2009 – "Be Water Wise" – focused on the critical importance of careful use of water in the United States and the world. The theme for Earth Day is "The Green Generation," a campaign culminating on the 40th anniversary of Earth Day in 2010 that encourages ordinary people to take action to improve their health, improve their schools, and participate in building solutions to urgent global issues such as climate change or the world’s water crises.
A combination of severe drought and increasing demand has strained the capacity of Lake Mead and the Colorado River, shown here at Hoover Dam.
Many states face critical water shortages due to a combination of increasing supply needs and drought. Most notably, in the Southwest more than 30 million residents from Utah to Northern Mexico now rely on the Colorado River for all their water needs. For the past 5 years a devastating drought has taxed the reservoir system designed and built 70 years ago for a third of the people it now serves. So serious is the shortage that residents of Las Vegas, Nevada, are being encouraged to replace their green lawns with Southwestern desert xeriscapes to reduce the demands on Lake Mead.
Lake Mead was formed in 1937 when the massive Hoover Dam project bottled up the Colorado River to provide water storage and hydroelectric power for Nevada, Southern California, and Arizona. The demands on that lake to satisfy needs for drinking water, irrigation, and electricity will take more than 2.77 million acre-feet of water in 2009 alone.
In the Southeastern United States, severe drought conditions affect parts of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. In fact, this drought has been so severe in recent years that at one point, the main reservoir for metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia, was down to only a 60-day supply.
The United States is fortunate to have one of the safest public drinking water supplies in the world. In 2000, the United States alone used 408 billion gallons of water per day! This equals approximately 1400 gallons of water per day for every man, woman, and child. That amount is enough to fill 14 standard-size bathtubs and includes both direct water use (drinking, bathing, flushing the toilet, etc.) and indirect water use (watering the lawn, washing the car, growing crops, manufacturing, etc.). The increasing demands of agricultural, industrial, and personal consumption have pushed the management of water onto the center of the public health stage along with water sanitation.
Be Water Wise
Agriculture is a major consumer of water resources.
Just as clean water preserves health, water conservation also protects health, by ensuring that water will be available when it is needed, now and in the future. And water conservation is especially effective when practiced at the micro-level − by individuals and families as part of everyday habits. In an average household, simple acts such as taking shorter showers, doing one less load of laundry per week, brushing your teeth with the water turned off, washing your car less often, and reducing the amount of water used for landscaping can save more than 1500 gallons of water per month.
Wise water use is a crucial component of good public health policy. Conserving water in the face of increased scarcity and demand will ensure its continued availability to support good health outcomes.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has dedicated significant resources to the topic of water; visit the new Healthy Water Web site.
This week, designated to increase our awareness of the importance of being water wise, should serve as a springboard to action for each of us. Encourage your family, neighbors, and coworkers to examine their water use patterns and to actively reduce their water footprints.
When it comes to water use, "less is more" is the best way to go. When you use less water, you help ensure there is more water for everyone. It truly is a time to "Be Water Wise."
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