Bibliography

http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/environment/water-consumption.aspx
The Conference Board of Canada website


http://www.elcowater.org/
The Elco Water website


www.ga.water.usgs.gov/edu
The Science for Schools website


http://www.water%20green%20venture.ca/
The Wise Water Use website


http://whyfiles.org/131fresh_water/2.html
The Water Woes website.

McGuinty Wants Ontario to Export Water Technology, not Water

Here is a link to an article about McGuinty recently anouncing a new program that Ontario is launching. He is also anounced a new legislation that it is illegal to sell Ontario's water. Click on the link to read the article: http://www.ctv.ca/sevlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20100518/ontaerio-water-bill-100518/20100518

How to Conserve Water in your Home

Here is a video about appliances and ways to save water in your home. Click on the link below to watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MDLpVHY8LE

Think Globally, Act Locally

Industry is the biggest consumer of water in Canada. It is hard for the individual person to try to fix this, but if a large group of people protested this, these companies would get pressure from the government to change their ways, and hopefully, they would. It is also very hard to control a rapidly growing population. However, we can control how much water that evergrowing population uses. Luckily, there are many ways in which an individual person can do this. The hard part is to get everyone to conserve water in these small ways. It might mean changing part of your daily routine but it will be worth it in the long run.

More and more, consumers are buying low flow appliances. In certain provinces, it is now the law when installing a new water-using appliance, it must be a low flow appliance. This is a good place to start. Humans can also contribute to this effort by doing simple things. For example, don't leave the water running when you are washing your face and brushing your teeth, don't take long showers, make sure there are no leaks in your home, and don't flush the toilet unnecessarily. These are only a few of the things you can do. Here is a link to 45 other tips for conserving water: http://www.americanwater.com/49ways.php.

Imagine if everyone with a low flow sink conciously made an effort to use less water everyday and tried to take shorter showers. This would have a large impact on that household's water consumption! Now imagine if an entire street did that, an entire block, city, province or nation! This can become a reality if everyone changes their attitude. I think that a lot of people believe that this problem is too large for anyone to do anything about. However, if we can help change the attitude of an entire population to "We can do something about this", we could save millions of litres of water. Canada is currently ranked 15 on the world water consumption list. Nowhere is the phrase "Think globally, act locally" more appropriate than in regards to our most precious natural resource. It is the thinking and the actions of every individual that count.

Good Transparency:Water Conservation

This is a video about saving water and how little things you do in your day can make a very big difference. Click on the link to watch the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOLf2RbxmzE

The Need for Sustainability

The basic definition of sustainability is to be able to use the resources that we have available to us today, while conserving enough for future generations. Currently we are not doing this with water. Many people think there is plenty of water on earth (we have 5 oceans don't we?) . However, not all of this water is usable. Humans can only drink fresh water, and while we do have the technology to convert this salt water into fresh water, this will use energy and release more harmful emissions into the atmosphere. This fresh water could potentially run out, and if this happens the consequences would be dire.

This problem is very large because it is hard to get everyone to reduce their water usage. People who live in poor, third world countries do not use as much water as we do in North America. If every household in North America reduced their water consumption to 2/3 of what it is now, that would be a hugely positive impact. The need for education about sustainable water practices is essential to this movement. If children are brought up to use less water, then they will continue to do so for their entire lives. Unfortunately, my generation will possibly have to deal with the consequences of wasting water. It is my hope that the people of my generation teach their kids water conserving habits so that maybe their generation won't have water shortages.

Overwatering in the Boston Area

Ever since last year, it seems that fish have been disappearing from the many Massachusetts waterways. According to experts this is due to the fact that people have been using more water than necessary. Click on the link below to read more.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/06/07/in_mass_concerns_rising_on_water_overuse/?page=1

The Consequences of Wasting Water

The consequences of wasting water are many and troubling. Human developement depends on water. It is predicted that in the next few years, there will be a worldwide water shortage. In the next few years the world population will grow and there will be more industries which will put a strain on the earth's water supply. This would could eventually cause death, drought, and hundreds of factories having to close down which would put thousands of people out of work. However, this is only in the most extreme case.

Currently we are not being as conscientious about our water usage as we could be. This has already had some effects on various bodies of water and on various ecosystems as well.Ponds, rivers, and lakes all over the world have dried up (like the one above) because their water supply has been used up by extensive farming and (in certain very warm regions) of severe droughts. In Ontario, we have a large amount of freshwater but in the Prairies, there is hardly any. A major concern is that when this worldwide water shortage begins, what will people who live in places with little freshwater do for drinking water and water for their crops? This could be a huge problem for the Prairies because on of their major sources of revenue is agriculture. With less water, there would be more of a chance of their crops failing. This would kill the economy in the Prairies. Alberta also uses a lot of water to refine their oil and if there was severe water rationing, then they would have a hard time refining as much oil as they do today, which means of course, less revenue. Already China has said that "over 300 of their cities are running short". This is partly due to the fact that China's rivers are severely over polluted but this is also due to the countries naturally small water supply, overusage and 1 billion people who use water everyday.

It seems to me that most people just shake their heads and think that the water is fine for now and all these catastrophes will happen somewhere down the line. Unfortunately, experts predict that our children's generation should see water shortages. If you think of it that way, the horrific consequences of water shortages seem a lot more real and not so far off at all.

Irrigation Systems from an Oasis in Morocco

This is a video about irrigation methods used near an oasis in Morocco to help farmers supply their crops with enough water to survive. Click on the link to see the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGIn4boa71E

Overusing Water in the Oilsands

This article is about the water coming from the nearby Delta lakes and the Athabasca river that help treat and refine the oil coming from the Alberta oilsands. This constant use is making the Athabasca river lose 2-4.5 barrels of water to make 1 gallon of oil. According to one expert, time to fix this damage, is running out. Although this article was written in 2007, the deadline date they give in this article is all the more terrifyingly close in 2010. Click on the link below to read more.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2007/05/10/water-oilsands.html

Water Usage and Waste

Water waste is something that we see happening in our everyday lives. Many people waste water without even thinking about it. Water is a renewable resource, but since humans have started polluting rivers, oceans, lakes and streams, for how long will we want to reuse that water? All living things need clean water to survive, and with the increasing global population, there will be an even larger need for more clean water.

Many people in poor, dry countries around the world do not have clean, safe water to drink. It is hard to imagine that situation getting any worse, bu what if the rest of the world starts to run out of clean, safe drinking water?

The blue "water glass" chart above, showing residential water use, demonstrates that about only 47% of our total outdoor usage of water is effective, leaving the other 23% of the water used to be wasted. This is enough water to cover almost the entirety of the indoor water use in an average household. A few possible solutions to this problem might be less frequent watering and not watering during the hottest hours of the day.

As you can see from the pie chart at the top of the page, the largest percentage of indoor water usage is caused by toilets. Traditionally, toilets have used about 13 litres per flush. Low-flow toilets, however, use 6 litres or less per flush.

Everyone needs to take showers and wash their clothes, but these activities use large amounts of water as well. It is estimated, for example, that an average of about 2.5 gallons of water is used per minute in a shower. Low-flow shower heads that can be used to control the amount of water wasted, and high efficiency washing machines use far less water than traditional machines.

In spite of many newspaper articles and tv documentaries, many people are still not aware of these facts. It is my hope that Water Works can help educate people about water usage and water waste!

Welcome to the Water Works website!!!

Water Works is an organization that informs community members and leaders about water waste, the consequences of water waste, the need for sustainability, and what we can do about it as a community.