The Truth of Water – Answers

Chris from Toronto writes:

Hi there, I am doing a research project on the viability of implementing some rural water saving solutions in the city.  The one idea I had was to use rain barrels on top of larger buildings to supply the occupants with their water.  I figured that anything we can do to reduce the load on the city reservoirs the better, especially to conserve the electricity that our pumps use.  I was wondering if you could give me some input…Aren’t apartment buildings built with an internal reservoir system already that purifies the water and distributes it onsite?  If not, do you think it could be practical to just tie into systems that don’t require purifying, like toilets and washing machines?  I’d really appreciate your help.  Thanks

Hi Chris, thanks for your question.

There are two truths happening right now:

1. An increase in population
2. A water supply steadily decreasing in availability

As our population goes up, our ideas of housing is changing.  In larger cities, more and more condominiums are rising to the sky, housing more people in a smaller area.  In smaller cities, new housing developments are severely cutting the land around houses, packing them in closer and closer.

Working in the water treatment section of a municipality, it always amazes me how much water is being treated to tough potable standards, and how little of it is used for potable uses like drinking and cooking.  Most of it goes to washing and industrial purposes.

Currently most water is used as a once through application.  It goes down the drain and dissapears to the waste water treatment plant, for treatment and release to the environment.  But as water becomes more scarce, water will have to be recycled if we would like to continue to use water as we are.

I don’t know the current status of most apartment buildings. However, sustainability projects such as you propose are feasible.  The infrastructure on older buildings would be expensive, but it would be relatively cheap to integrate into brand new apartment buildings.

Potable water from the city could still be piped in.  However, you would have a tap or taps designated as potable in your apartment, such as the kitchen sink and the bathrooms. Your drinking, cooking and other miscellaneous uses (such as brushing your teeth) would come from these taps.  To ensure that the potable water does not get cross contaminated from any other water source, the piping would have to be completely separate from other sources.

Separate from your drinking water, showers, laundry facilities and outside hose bibs could be recycled grey water mixed with rain water collected on the roof.  Simple centrifugal separators, filtration and light disinfection (U.V. and/or chlorination) could make this water clean, clear and useful for such washing applications.  The water sent to your waste water treatment plant would be a more concentrated form of the contaminants removed.

Using a system like that would mean existing water treatment plants would be able to supply cities far into the future with their potable water needs without the need for further and further expansion.

I hope that gives you a direction for your research project, Chris.  If you have any further questions or would like further detail, please do not hesitate to write in again.

For some of us, it seems hard to believe that fresh clean drinking water is precious and in short supply.  This morning, I awoke to a thick layer of dew wetting the ground and fogging up my car’s windows.  The mist was so heavy that I couldn’t see one hundred meters ahead of me.  I drove over our local river, so gorged it filled it’s banks with white froth, and just last week I went fishing far out on Lake Ontario, rolling waves five feet high and nothing but water to be seen in the distance.

Yet, water is our most precious resource.  We cannot survive without fresh clean water daily and for the majority of the world, this is a very hard thing to come by.

Looking at our planet from space, it is so full of water it is blue.  But let us put things in perspective.  If all the worlds water could fit into a two liter soda bottle, only a teaspoon of that is actual fresh water. And of that, only a drop of that water is readily available to the human population.

If you are reading this now, you have an internet connection and it is very likely that you live in first world conditions, so I’d like to put things further into perspective.  Many of you who are already concious of water conservation have installed low flow toilets in your house.  Indeed, many local, state and federal laws prohibit the manufacture of anything but.  One flush of a low flow toilet takes six litres of water, which is four and a half more liters than the daily average that most African people use.

And water is drying up all over the world.  We are using it faster than nature can replenish the resources, at an alarming rate.  Even in places like where I live, with a seemingly inexhaustible supply.

The people at Nuprana.com are all to aware of how precious water is and how serious conservation action needs to be taken, and taken now.

Their site features news and articles on the worlds plight on it’s water resources.  They offer real information on a real problem, and what we can all do to help with this most important of causes.

And if you really are serious about implimenting effective change to your water consumption, they offer a line of affordable water conservation products designed to keep your house functional and water conciensious.

The impending lack of water is everyones problem.  Visit www.nuprana.com to learn more about what you can do.