Water and Pollution

While out for a walk yesterday morning I saw where someone had dumped some rubbish into the river. While on the way back home I saw three Red Kites and that always lifts my mood, I could not get out of my mind that problem of pollution. What I had seen was dumped oil containers, and while unsightly themselves, it will be the residue of oil that will cause the greatest problem.

In Britain the rivers have been transformed and are much cleaner than they ever were. Industry is just not allowed to dump waste into the water courses in the way that used to happen. While there are still industries that are allowed to do this, the most damaging legal examples of pollution are now consigned to history. The greatest risks to water courses are now mainly industrial farming; Effluents, Nitrates and Pesticide run off from this industry. Therefore, much of the pollution that does occur arises from accidents or the deliberate unthinking actions of a few.

Even with the accidents, normally it is a lack of a well thought out environmental protection plan or cutting corners, normally by cost cutting, that lead to these incidents. Therefore accidents are normally the result of carelessness. When it comes to deliberate dumping, well I just cannot understand the mentality. As all forms of rubbish dumping like fly tipping is despoiling the environment for the people dumping the rubbish, as it is for the rest of us.

However, when I started thinking about the problem as well as thinking about posting on the matter, two matters struck me. The first was that while many activities legally require an environmental assessment before they are allowed, I have yet to see or read one that does not accept some measure of environmental degradation. While often these reports are primarily aimed at trying to reduce the environmental impact of human activity, and often they make people adjust or stop the most damaging activities, they hardly ever stop an activity from going ahead.

The other aspect relates to the amount of water that humans use. On Planet Earth only one percent of the water on the globe is available as drinking water. That is why frequently you will hear the prediction that the next wars will be over Water. Also in places like Africa, people only have ten litres of water to use each day. That is for all their needs, washing, cooking and drinking.

When I was at University, I offered accommodation to an African chap as he was caught between having to leave on place and the start of moving into a house share. One aspect that was an eye opener for me was that he used a glass of water to Wash his hands, brush his teeth, and then drank the remaining water. Even with the abundance of water available to him, he was too well schooled in conserving water to waste any.

Yet most normal toilet cisterns will use nine litres of water per flush. So perhaps those predictions will come to fruition. Even now, in Spain last year water had to be shipped in by tankers, billions of litres because of drought there. One of the little understood aspects of the Gaza conflict is that Israel takes disproportionately more water for their settlements and this is an important aspect of why the Palestinian people are so aggrieved. It’s not the whole story but it is a factor that cannot be ignored. So I would argue that this is already happening.

But the real point is water is in fact really precious, yet we fail to understand that at our peril. In Britain while it may seem that we can afford to pollute our water sources, in reality we cannot as we are polluting our own drinking water. Therefore, sooner or later we will have to start looking at ways to seriously stop people fouling our water and that we start regarding water to as precious as oil.