The Large Problem of Water Shortages
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THE HE LARGE PROBLEM OF
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f you are looking for a project or a career path in materials research, there are promising areas that could have a huge potential impact in the area of sustainability of environmental resources. Let’s take a look at the sustainability of earth’s freshwater resources, and how it is being affected by materials research. Most of us think that water for drinking and bathing is abundant, but that is not really true.1 Most of the water is in our oceans. Only 3% of earth’s water is fresh water, and only a small fraction of that is accessible. Add to that factors associated with worldwide population growth, as well as increasing reliance of agriculture and other industries on significant volumes of fresh water, and there are real problems ahead in terms of the availability of water. Several countries do not have enough groundwater to sustain their current populations.1 There are vast inequities in the availability of fresh water from country to country and from location to location within countries because of geographic disparities in rainfall and availability of groundwater. The Atacama Desert in Chile, which has been extremely dry for 3 million years, receives (on average) 15 mm of rain per year.2 Some locations in the Atacama receive only 1–3 mm of rain per year. Contrast this with some cities in the northeastern state of Meghalaya in India that receive an average of almost 12 m of rain per year.3 The city of Cherrapunji in this region was recorded to have received 9.3 m of rain in July 1861, and 26.461 m of rain from August 1860 through July 1861.3 In southwestern parts of the United States, the vagaries of weather patterns have led to severe water shortages that are already affecting the availability of drinking water and water for agriculture, industries, and household use. California is currently in a multi-year drought. Reservoirs in California and other southwestern states in the United States have lost a significant amount of water. Some are too dry to supply water. The water level in Lake Mead, Nev., is 120 feet below the level measured in 2000.4 The snow pack in the Sierra Madres, the source of water for many California cities, has been significantly below normal for several years in a row. News sources are reporting that the snow pack is at 83% of its level for the same time last year, which was also a below-average year for snow. I have jokingly told many of my friends that, if this keeps up, water will become so expensive that it will be cheaper to buy new clothes than to wash those I have. Maybe this is not really a joke. Or maybe we’ll take advantage of California’s temperate climate, and California will become a clothing optional society. If so, I need someone to recommend a really good diet!
Most of us who live in highly industrialized societies think of the availability of clean fresh water as abundant. The US government has attempted to ensure an abundance of clean water through regulatory provisions, including those in the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (passed in 19
