Water Quality And Waste Water Management - Essay Example

As a result these people become sick, develop serious illnesses, and die from water borne diseases(Drinking Water and Quality,2001).Inadequate water leads to poor sanitation and hygiene and malnutrition posing a major threat to humans; causing millions of deaths - particularly of children less than 5 years of age. Water crisis often forces people to use stagnant water for drinking and washing themselves who then fall victim to many different kind of diseases. 2. Water quality and quantity of concern In the United States most of the drinking water comes from surface or ground water sources.

Researches show surface water from sources like rivers, streams, lakes is under environmental contamination of algal growth, geologic formations, waste water plant treatment discharges, agricultural discharges etc.The major concern with ground water resources is chemical contamination from arsenic and radon due to natural hydrology, contamination of soil from hazardous waste dumps and leaky underground storage tanks . Water quality concerns in the developing countries are not limited to public health.

Contamination of water by poisonous metals such as arsenic and mercury in mining activities are hazardous to the forest ecosystems and their bio-diversity. The United States is relatively water sufficient at 8,830 m3/person per yr.But a recent report generated by Tetra Tech for Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) shows that in the coming decades one out of three countries will face greater risk of water shortages due to global warming and climate change and may hamper economic development and agricultural production.

In contrast water scarcity had been a matter of concern since decades in developing countries. Shortage of water often leads to water washed diseases as people cannot wash themselves, their homes or clothes regularly. These include eye infections like trachoma and skin diseases such as scabies. Over 200 million people are infected due to ingestion of worm eggs or larvae and the diseases causes 20,000 deaths a year. . In many developing nations women and young girls may take the responsibility to draw and carry the family’s water over miles.

In long term carrying such heavy weights may damage their neck, head and spine and lead to problems in pregnancy and child birth (Pruss-Ustun and Bos, 2008). 3. Description of water quality and quantity issues Recent studies have shown that world population had increased 300% in 20th century and water demand 700%.In addition, 2 million tons of human waste is dumped annually into the rivers and streams around the globe. Ownership of water rights is complicated and not always clear. For example, water resources like well may belong to ‘X’ but the water rights may belong to ‘Y’.

‘Y’ may lease the water for use on land owned by ’Z’ (Goff L, 2004). Current capital investment is insufficient to maintain and renew existing facilities for public already having water supply and sanitation coverage. For example, an estimated US$ 52 billion (Bartram and Hutton, 2009) is needed annually and only around 25% of that ?nance is available. Studies have shown that the water supply targets are justified for all regions around the globe, but the sanitation targets are only unambiguously justified for the Americas.

This is attributed to two factors: the costs of sanitation connections are about three times those of water supply and the benefits per connection are somewhat lower. It is reported that the costs of achieving the sanitation targets by 2015 exceed the benefits for many of the developing regions in Africa and Asia. The majority of