Re: Hosepipe bans : Mon Apr 09, 2012 1:54 am  

As an aside, there was a recent report in the US which stated that the Ogallala aquifer, the word's largest body of standing free water, has dropped from an average depth of 240 feet to just 80 feet. Bear in mind that this aquifer is almost as long as the Rockies stretching from close to the Canadian border down to Texas. It is the sole reason the American Midwest has, for close to a century, been regarded as the World's "Breadbasket". The US Department of Agriculture estimates this region has little more than sixty years of agricultural viability before it becomes a dustbowl.. Consider the Colorado river which now no longer reaches the ocean. It is estimated that a cotton T-shirt takes 400 gallons of water to produce. Denim jeans 1,800 gallons. A car takes 39,000 gallons. A board of timber takes 5.4 gallons. A barrel of beer requires 1,500 gallons. One ton of steel needs 62,000 gallons. Remember that ALL of this water is lost to the freshwater cycle.

As an aside, there was a recent report in the US which stated that the Ogallala aquifer, the word's largest body of standing free water, has dropped from an average depth of 240 feet to just 80 feet. Bear in mind that this aquifer is almost as long as the Rockies stretching from close to the Canadian border down to Texas. It is the sole reason the American Midwest has, for close to a century, been regarded as the World's "Breadbasket". The US Department of Agriculture estimates this region has little more than sixty years of agricultural viability before it becomes a dustbowl.. Consider the Colorado river which now no longer reaches the ocean. It is estimated that a cotton T-shirt takes 400 gallons of water to produce. Denim jeans 1,800 gallons. A car takes 39,000 gallons. A board of timber takes 5.4 gallons. A barrel of beer requires 1,500 gallons. One ton of steel needs 62,000 gallons. Remember that ALL of this water is lost to the freshwater cycle.

Re: Hosepipe bans : Mon Apr 09, 2012 7:39 am  

Mugwump wrote:

It is estimated that a cotton T-shirt takes 400 gallons of water to produce. Denim jeans 1,800 gallons. A car takes 39,000 gallons. A board of timber takes 5.4 gallons. A barrel of beer requires 1,500 gallons. One ton of steel needs 62,000 gallons.

Remember that ALL of this water is lost to the freshwater cycle.

There is no reason why many production techniques cannot recycle and re-use much of the water they use other than its currently cheaper to use fresh supply - if you are washing denim or cotton during the production cycle then it wouldn't take too much imagination to just not throw that water down the drain and pay for someone else to treat it further down the drainage - just filter it yourself and re-use it, similarly you could argue that beer production which has water as 90-something percent of its final product, is recycled further down the drainage channel, they aren't really good examples of water being lost for good.

Mintball also linked to a newspaper report on Facebook this weekend where Thames Water have turned off all of the ornamental fountains in central London until the Olympics in the name of "saving water". I'd love to know how badly you'd have to design an ornamental fountain so that the water didn't fall back into the pool and get re-pumped back to the fountain again, its almost impossible to imagine how badly you'd have to design an ornamental fountain so that it needed a constant supply of new water and all of the used water just ran away into the drains and was lost.

Re: Hosepipe bans : Mon Apr 09, 2012 1:39 pm  

McLaren_Field wrote:

There is no reason why many production techniques cannot recycle and re-use much of the water they use other than its currently cheaper to use fresh supply - if you are washing denim or cotton during the production cycle then it wouldn't take too much imagination to just not throw that water down the drain and pay for someone else to treat it further down the drainage - just filter it yourself and re-use it, similarly you could argue that beer production which has water as 90-something percent of its final product, is recycled further down the drainage channel, they aren't really good examples of water being lost for good.

These figures have been compiled by Maude Barlow who is one of the world's leading experts on the global hydrological cycle with a list of achievements and awards as long as a pair of stilts.

Yes, it doesn't take much imagination to introduce systems that would return water used in production to the freshwater system but the point here is very few corporations are even remotely interested. Such cost money and the prevailing capitalist model dictates that non-essential investment is, well, non-essential. Water is viewed as an infinite resource and until such time as they are compelled to recognise its finite nature it will continue to be drawn from aquifers, lakes and other forms of long-term store, processed and flushed into rivers which return it to the sea.

When I worked for Toyota where we sold and maintained forklift trucks I regularly visited places such as paper mills, breweries, steel plants etc. all of which were situated on rivers into which huge pipes pumped millions of gallons of waste water.

The problem is most people are under the fundamentally flawed misconception that every litre of freshwater flushed into river systems is returned fully by evaporation and precipitation. This is simply not true. In Britain we are fortunate to benefit from more rain than most and the net loss is relatively small. But most other nations are watching their reserves of freshwater slip away. It takes millions of years to fill an aquifer. Ditto glacial lakes.

By far the worst means of water loss is agriculture. In many countries vast tracts of land have been opened up for crops which are nowhere near existing river systems. These crops must be watered and the excess is simply lost.

It's comforting to think we in Britain with our copious quantity of rain will be somehow immune. But let's not forget that signing up to the WTO, EU etc. has provided transnational corporations the legislative framework to gain access to water supplies which traditionally have been meant for domestic use only. I give Tony Blair some credit for standing firm in the face of some pretty unreasonable demands made by the world's biggest water companies such as Danone which are based in France. But that was only the opening gambit in what they view as a war to gain total access to the world's remaining supplies of potable water and auction it to the highest bidder.

Let us not forget what happened in Bolivia, where the fight over who controls water reached such a critical level that rainwater itself was handed over to Danone and any citizen with the temerity to collect such for personal use found himself on the wrong side of the law.

Re: Hosepipe bans : Mon Apr 09, 2012 5:30 pm  

Mugwump wrote: As an aside, there was a recent report in the US which stated that the Ogallala aquifer, the word's largest body of standing free water, has dropped from an average depth of 240 feet to just 80 feet. Bear in mind that this aquifer is almost as long as the Rockies stretching from close to the Canadian border down to Texas. It is the sole reason the American Midwest has, for close to a century, been regarded as the World's "Breadbasket". The US Department of Agriculture estimates this region has little more than sixty years of agricultural viability before it becomes a dustbowl.. Consider the Colorado river which now no longer reaches the ocean. It is estimated that a cotton T-shirt takes 400 gallons of water to produce. Denim jeans 1,800 gallons. A car takes 39,000 gallons. A board of timber takes 5.4 gallons. A barrel of beer requires 1,500 gallons. One ton of steel needs 62,000 gallons. Remember that ALL of this water is lost to the freshwater cycle. Remember not all of these require fresh water. Remember that fresh water is not primarily required to be potable. i.e. for drinking. Remember also that there is more water on the Earth than ever will be rquired by industry. Remember that there is more energy dispensed by the Sun every second than has ever been consumed by mankind since the beginning of human history. Rememeber to keep calm and carry on.

Mugwump wrote: As an aside, there was a recent report in the US which stated that the Ogallala aquifer, the word's largest body of standing free water, has dropped from an average depth of 240 feet to just 80 feet. Bear in mind that this aquifer is almost as long as the Rockies stretching from close to the Canadian border down to Texas. It is the sole reason the American Midwest has, for close to a century, been regarded as the World's "Breadbasket". The US Department of Agriculture estimates this region has little more than sixty years of agricultural viability before it becomes a dustbowl.. Consider the Colorado river which now no longer reaches the ocean. It is estimated that a cotton T-shirt takes 400 gallons of water to produce. Denim jeans 1,800 gallons. A car takes 39,000 gallons. A board of timber takes 5.4 gallons. A barrel of beer requires 1,500 gallons. One ton of steel needs 62,000 gallons. Remember that ALL of this water is lost to the freshwater cycle. Remember not all of these require fresh water. Remember that fresh water is not primarily required to be potable. i.e. for drinking. Remember also that there is more water on the Earth than ever will be rquired by industry. Remember that there is more energy dispensed by the Sun every second than has ever been consumed by mankind since the beginning of human history. Rememeber to keep calm and carry on.

Re: Hosepipe bans : Mon Apr 09, 2012 9:11 pm  

billypop wrote:

Remember not all of these require fresh water.

Yet they take it anyway.

Remember that fresh water is not primarily required to be potable. i.e. for drinking. Remember also that there is more water on the Earth than ever will be rquired by industry.

We're talking here about fresh water. Not salt. And unless you have some wonder source of energy to power the insatiable requirements of desalinisation there really is no point in mentioning salt.

Remember that there is more energy dispensed by the Sun every second than has ever been consumed by mankind since the beginning of human history.

Irrelevant.

Rememeber to keep calm and carry on.

Which is precisely the kind of non-thinking which has landed us in this mess.

Re: Hosepipe bans : Tue Apr 10, 2012 2:49 am  

Mugwump wrote:

You really need to familiarise yourself with the terms and conditions of the WTO and the EU. After all, your government(s) agreed to it.

I already know it could never happen under present rules however I was hypothesising what ultimately would be the best outcome for us the UK citizen so there's no need to be in your face familiarisation jibe!
I'm not sure I understand your second comment, which government belongs to me exactly?

Re: Hosepipe bans : Tue Apr 10, 2012 5:00 am  

sally cinnamon wrote:

Then you just increase the price. If necessary make it high enough that the revenue gained from people using hosepipes will pay for desalination plants and pipes to bring in water from the ocean.

good idea in theory but could never be practiable sc

france has metered water and most meters are read twice yearly and bills sent out accordingly - the bills consist of the standing charge plus water used then the taxes etc
imposing a higher tariff would mean meter readers visiting each household at the beginning of the ban which would physically take them a few weeks and the revisiting after the ban - you can imagine the confusion and logistical problems that would cause ? It just couldn't be done unless a meter could be invented that was on a timer to measure the water used at restriction times - the basic meter is difficult enough to keep going so I really can't see an easy solution.

the meter system is a fair system and the water authorities rely on peoples honesty plus local snitches to enforce the system - but to be fair most people I know don't abuse the system,they use the water they need to use simply because it IS metered...

Re: Hosepipe bans : Tue Apr 10, 2012 7:41 pm  

I am truly tired of arguing with people who think there is a shortage of water (look at the sea and the lakes and the oceans) or energy (look at the sun). Just harness it.

Re: Hosepipe bans : Wed Apr 11, 2012 1:03 am  

Mugwump is right - desalination is ridiculously energy intensive. This isn't just allowing water to evaporate and collecting vapour in some static way. even in the middle of the drought here in Australia the desal plants weren't running at anything like capacity for that reason.

Re: Hosepipe bans : Wed Apr 11, 2012 4:55 am  

McLaren_Field wrote:

Mintball also linked to a newspaper report on Facebook this weekend where Thames Water have turned off all of the ornamental fountains in central London until the Olympics in the name of "saving water". I'd love to know how badly you'd have to design an ornamental fountain so that the water didn't fall back into the pool and get re-pumped back to the fountain again, its almost impossible to imagine how badly you'd have to design an ornamental fountain so that it needed a constant supply of new water and all of the used water just ran away into the drains and was lost.

Fact - The vast majority (99.9%) of ornamental fountains utilise recycled water - it's simple,you have a closed circuit one or more pumps depending on the size and type of fountain,some kind of filter and bob is indeed you uncle.

the same water recirculates according to the timer on the pump - most pumps/fountains start at about 0700/0800 and switch off at about midnight

water can be lost from the sealed system through the wind or leaks etc and that water lost is automatically topped up by a level sensor which tells a valve to open and replace the lost water - this amount is usually small if at all in most fountains,whatever their size

if London has drained their fountains during the winter like most towns & cities then the fountains are normally cleaned with a high pressure hose and then refilled when deemed safe according to the weather conditions - some councils may choose not to drain the fountains in winter if they believe the weather will remain relatively mild.

I can understand Londons reticence to not use water at the present time as the same fountains will probably be drained and washed (and refilled) before the olympics start