Warning: Water Shortages Ahead

Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.

These words of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner could well have summarized the gloomy outlook of scientists and Government officials last week at the United Nations conference on water at Mar del Plata, Argentina. While the assembled experts agreed that the global supply of usable water is as great as ever, they warned that it may soon be inadequate to slake the world's growing thirst. The day is not distant, warned Syrian Delegate Saub Kaule, when "a drop of water will cost more than a drop of oil."

Ominous Increase. As spacecraft pictures of the blue-green earth so dramatically show, the planet has an abundance of water. The problem is that very little of it is directly usable by man. Fully 97.3% of the world's 1.4 billion cubic kilometers (8.7 million cubic miles) of water is ocean and thus unfit for drinking or agriculture. Of the 2.7% of the water that is fresh, more than three-quarters is locked either in glaciers or polar ice. Another large portion of the remainder is trapped as so-called fossil water in underground aquifers, some of them thousands of meters below the earth's surface. Indeed, of all the world's fresh water, only .36%, in rivers, lakes and swamps, is easily accessible and available for human use. Says Gilbert F. White of the University of Colorado: "The form and localization of this usable water can be altered by human activity, and its quality can be improved for better human use. But the total always remains the same."

The demand on this limited supply has been increasing at an ominous rate as more and more people use water not only for drinking and cooking but to bathe, flush toilets, wash cars and water lawns. While a human in the semi-arid lands of Africa may use no more than three liters (.8gal.) of water a day, those in the developed countries are more profligate. According to a report presented at the U.N. conference, London uses 263 liters (68 gal.) a day per capita, Paris 500 liters (130 gal.), Moscow 600 liters (160 gal.) and New York City 1,045 liters (270 gal.). Even if individual consumption is reduced, total demand is likely to continue rising; the world's population, now more than 4 billion, is expected to increase to as much as 7 billion by the year 2000.

Still, the amount of water used directly for human consumption does not compare with the quantity required for agriculture, which accounts for at least 80% of all the water used by mankind. Between 30% and 40% of the world's food production is now dependent on irrigation. As population grows and the demand for food increases, additional irrigation will be needed to cultivate marginal farm land for necessary crops. Industry is also using ever increasing amounts of water--to generate electricity, to cool nuclear reactors and manufacture chemicals and metals. As a result, many lakes and streams have been so badly polluted by agriculture and industry--as well as by the wastes from increasing numbers of humans--that they have become unusable without expensive treatment. Despite purification measures, the need to take drinking water from contaminated sources has caused widespread disease. The World Health Organization estimates that as much as 80% of the world's cases of disease are traceable to unclean water.

Dry Wells. Recent dry spells have made the world even more conscious of just how limited global water supplies really are. In many areas of the U.S. West, for example, the current drought (TIME, March 7) has accelerated the depletion of underground aquifers already strained by the rapid growth in population and agriculture. Many wells have already run dry, forcing farmers to dig deeper and more expensive ones in an effort to reach the declining water levels. Some farmers in the Texas Panhandle, who have been drawing their water from the deep and bounteous Ogallala aquifer, calculate that their wells will run dry --drought or no drought--soon after the year 2000.

In other areas, though, there are ample reserves--including an aquifer recently discovered under northeastern Wyoming that experts believe might yield as much as 6,000 liters (1,600 gal.) a minute for decades to come. "There is plenty of water in the U.S.," says Donovan Kelly of the Department of Interior's Geological Survey. "It's simply not where you need it."

Some countries are trying novel approaches to meet their water needs. Saudi Arabia has contracted with a French firm to study the feasibility of towing an iceberg from Antarctica to a Red Sea port, where it could be melted for its fresh water. Elsewhere, more conventional methods are being used to increase the supply of usable water. Among them:

DESALINATION. Though Israel--which gets little or no rain for up to eight months of the year--draws much of its water from the Jordan River, it also gets part of its supply from the sea. Israeli desalination plants now desalt 3 million cubic meters (7.8 billion gal.) of sea water every year. The cost is high ($1 per cubic meter), but the Israelis have little choice. In Saudi Arabia, where cost is no object, the government has embarked on a $12 billion program that will enable it to desalt 2.3 billion liters (600 million gal.) a day by 1980. Oil-rich Kuwait already gets almost all of its water by desalination.

DEEP WELLS. By sinking wells, Egyptian geologists are attempting to tap the vast underground reservoirs that are believed to lie beneath the Western Desert, some of them as much as 1,200 meters (4,000 ft.) below the sand. "Getting at this water," says Egyptian Geologist Rushdi Said, "will make it possible for man to again live in the desert." But only for a while. Filled at the rate of only millimeters a year, these reservoirs of fossil waters are replenished so slowly that for all practical purposes their contents are finite. Though they may yield water for centuries, all will eventually run dry.

RECYCLING. Some countries are stretching their water supplies by reusing water. The Japanese are testing a system under which water is first used for human consumption, then for industrial purposes. Finland's pulp and paper industry is trying a system under which it recovers its waste and reuses its water rather than drawing heavily on fresh supplies. Other countries require manufacturers and power companies to install closed-circuit cooling systems instead of allowing them to continually withdraw water from rivers or lakes.

RIVER DIVERSIONS. The Australians are diverting much of a river for irrigation; water from the Snowy River, which empties into the Tasman Sea, is being rerouted to flow through the Snowy Mountains into farmland watering systems. The Soviets are working on a similar project involving the Ob and the Yenisei, which flow north out of Siberia to the Kara Sea. By diverting part of these waters southward, the Soviets will feed them into an irrigation system that could keep marginal wheatlands productive.

All these approaches will help ease but cannot meet the world's growing need for water. No matter what is done to stretch water supplies, they will become inadequate if man continues to waste and contaminate them--and to reproduce in numbers that strain all natural resources. The world is getting thirstier by the day, and unless it starts saving water now, it may find the well dry tomorrow.

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