By Aiymere Sanchez, 14, Youth Farm Participant
ST. PETERSBURG — The fresh water supply is extremely limited and will not last forever. Most people think that we could never run out of water, but they are sadly mistaken. The world has an unlimited amount of water, but only 0.7 percent is available for humans to drink and use in day-to-day life.
We do have enough water on the earth so that we should not have to worry about it, but humans waste a lot of the water that we have available. Humans do not use the water sustainably, and in return, we will run out of water at some point in the future.
Water is essential to life. Through the years, the world’s population has never been higher than it is now, which is a problem. Freshwater is scarce, and this is because we get our water from three sources: ground, surface, and desalination.
Groundwater is water in aquifers that we tap into to get the majority of the water we drink. We have a certain amount of water in underground reservoirs worldwide, and they refill over time with rainwater, but because we use so much of the water from there, we do not give it time to refill.
Because of this, we are basically draining the one thing we need most in life. Surface water is ponds, lakes, and springs. It also includes rainwater, which is only 30 percent of surface water because it seeps into the ground and turns into groundwater. The last source is desalination, which is the process of converting salt water into fresh water.
There isn’t an easy way to solve this water crisis. The obvious answer would be desalination because it’s a seemingly unlimited amount of water. We can’t do this to the fullest extent because it takes a lot of power and money. Not only that, but it also causes environmental damage.
Water is a valuable resource that we can’t lose, and if there is anything that we should be conservative about it should be water. The main way to keep water usage down is to stop wasting it. If we turned the water off when we walked away from the sink while doing dishes or turned the water off when we brushed our teeth, we would save more water than you think.
It only takes a small step to make a big change.
