Cecile Gonzalez PostedFebruary 14, 2008 Mix together growing populations, changing weather patterns, and water-borne diseases, and the result could easily be a shortage of clean water. How concerned are you about the water supply in your community? Newer Sort By Date Amy Posted 10 years and 9 months ago Amy from Texas comments on Do you worry about the water supply? Water is being contaminated in developing countries in Central America and India. Drinking water/safe water is finishing in these countries.is there a way we can get that water back and stop it from being dirty? Steve Posted 11 years ago Steve from Maryland comments on Do you worry about the water supply? Providing clean water is a global issue. Every 20 seconds a child dies from a water related illness. One way to help until a larger solution is found, is to build solar stills. This is a simple mechanism where you dig a hole, place a plastic sheet over it, secure it with rocks, and then place a rock on the plastic to acquire water. You could also build one of these on a larger scale. The ultimate goal of providing clean water is to reduce the amount of energy used and the cost of desalinization. One way to make this manageable it to reverse osmosis. I am worried about water. This is a critical issue. Changing weather patterns makes this even harder. We might have to first start with weather patterns to make this possible. Larry Posted 11 years ago Larry from Maryland comments on Do you worry about the water supply? The water supply is a problem, I think they should try using electro-dialysis (reverse osmosis) or using salt water to power the energy for desalination. Michelle Posted 11 years ago Michelle from Maryland comments on Do you worry about the water supply? I think that the water problem is very serious. People die from this everyday. We should become aware of this because it is killing people. People could host fund raisers to raise money for water treatment. You could try to save water by turning it off when you are not using it. Money from fund raisers could be used for sewage treatment, decentralized distillation, or desalination. Kamal Posted 11 years and 3 months ago Kamal from California comments on Do you worry about the water supply? Most of the papers and articles written on this serious issue with access of clean water, do not adress the core of the issue. They always choose to chase their tails. Science and Engineering are excellent dumb tool that can not fix todays problems. Under Developed or developing countries have their hands tied behined their back, you need to figure out why!!Every thing cost money, their governments are not working for them. Meena Posted 11 years and 6 months ago Meena from texas comments on Do you worry about the water supply? We see drought in some areas and flood in other areas. We laid down more cables for communication and pipes for oil, why not start planning infrastructure to move water rapidly from flood prone areas to drought areas. These flood and drought also fluctuates from region to region over time, so plan for infrastructure changes to flow water both ways. Hugh Turner Posted 11 years and 7 months ago Hugh Turner from Mount Martha comments on Do you worry about the water supply? I dont really care about the water supply, Africa can get their own Thomas Posted 12 years and 9 months ago Thomas from Bangalore,INDIA comments on Do you worry about the water supply? whereis the rain to harvest rainwater, present available source is only borewellwater passing through plasticpipes often braking here and there mixing with mud and what all- - - .A 30by40 that is 1200sq.ft.site fully constructed house having no space to have own borewell . Cauvery project is dream for the senior citizens of the Bangaloreans, may happen after some genarations by the time the under layed water pipes become the senior pipe citizens and become useless like Us. melanie Posted 12 years and 9 months ago melanie from arizona comments on Do you worry about the water supply? i think its your job as environmentalists to make our water safe! why not give classes on water purification that each home owner can do themselves ? we all know that soon our safe world as we know it now wont be so safe any longer ! Nitish Kannan Posted 13 years and 5 months ago Nitish Kannan from United States comments on Do you worry about the water supply? Dean Kamen has the water purification technology, along with well and cheap solar and decentralized power all the world will have water its quite simple. This just needs funding if machines are built under 2k dollars then we can distribute for 3 billion dollars all the water needs of India or Africa? right? I mean wells and stirling engines and solar power with vapor distillers like the sterling slingshot can work 24/7 clean water for villages? lou gubrious Posted 13 years and 7 months ago lou gubrious from Arlington MA comments on Do you worry about the water supply? It is nice to see some really creative ideas circulated by NAE. I know some people personally whose thinking is constrained neither by the second law of thermodynamics nor by rules of economics. Go get 'em.For the rest of us, the dratted second law tells us that to get a ton of fresh water from a water source containing 3.2% salt, we need to expend 0.64 kWh no matter how we do it. That is the absolute minimum, which we cannot even be approached by any practical device. Engineering economics is less rigid, but experience teaches that expending energy to do work takes equipment, and it isn't even close to free.Amazingly, the overall efficiency of real devices long ago passed through 10%, and it is rising slowly but inexorably.When I was a wee lad, a very wise chemical engineer opined that getting food crops to grow in salty water looked to be an easier challenge than making irrigation water from the sea. I am now an old man. Alas, I'm still waiting. Dr.Sc. TTH Posted 13 years and 11 months ago Dr.Sc. TTH from Finland comments on Do you worry about the water supply? You have challenges including fresh water. I have a solution to make fresh water with solar energy (or by human power) from seawater or from any polluted water source. Who is ready to pay for the solution that is the problem - not water. Daryl Oster Posted 14 years and 7 months ago Daryl Oster from FL comments on Do you worry about the water supply? There is plenty of fresh clean water in the world (mostly frozen). Access is the issue -- this can be solved with Evacuated Tube Transport (google it). chethan Posted 14 years and 9 months ago chethan from bangalore, india comments on Do you worry about the water supply? instead of just organizing tech talks and seminars world wide about conserving water its high time that people start implementing those discussions and start finding answers to this end less problem. Jon Posted 14 years and 10 months ago Jon from Wyoming comments on Do you worry about the water supply? It is interesting that the discussions related to the limitations of our natural resources, including those pertaining to water, do not address the core issue which is that our exponentially increasing population will at some point exhaust our ability to sustain ourselves. Even if breakthroughs in desalination or water reuse occur we will soon have to face the fact that "built out" is a reality. What will we do then? What will be the political and societal consequences then? Has anyone looked to determine what a sustainable population is in the US? I know this is not a popular thing to do but considering that changes in climate are already pushing us to the limit it is a sorely needed research area. Bob Posted 14 years and 10 months ago Bob from San Jose comments on Do you worry about the water supply? @Rik Kakareko - Rik, there is very little free hydrogen in the atmosphere with which we could make water. You would probably have to bring tanks of hydrogen to arid villages to make a substantial amount of water, and it would just be easier to bring tanks of water instead... @Ken from Canada - could you post a link to your invention or something? Ken Posted 15 years ago Ken from Canada comments on Do you worry about the water supply? I have a very successull water cleaning apparatus that will change the way water is cleaned, economivcally, perfect clean and the worst problemm that I have is getting some company to look at it. The majors are so tied up mentally and $$$ with RO etc that they want us to go away,I will demonstrate my 10,000 gallon per day unit any where any time to anyone willing to help us go forward Rik Kakareko Posted 16 years and 4 months ago Rik Kakareko from Williamsburg, VA comments on Do you worry about the water supply? Water is already everywhere on the planet! Water is a great challenge in poor arid places. Water is a very simple molecule all we need is three atoms to create a water molecule. These atoms are readily available in the atmosphere, even in poor arid places. Why wouldn't we consider using solar energy to store and separate atmospheric gases namely Hydrogen and Oxygen, to create water at virtually any location on the planet???? RKRAO Posted 16 years and 6 months ago RKRAO from INDIA comments on Do you worry about the water supply? Rain water harvesting is the cheapest method be it through micro-watersheds or roof-top collection; suitable for rural areas like in India where 70 percent of population is located in 0.6 million villages. Any centralised treatment at village level will be difficult to maintain and operate. POU rather than POS is the best option for treatment;even the cheapest water treatment device is beyond the purse of the poor;solar water treatment raising the temperature to over 65 degrees to kill all pathogens by use of a bamboo basket covered with eating-plates coated with Aluminium foil [total cost rs.50 or one dollar] is the best option for POU; second best is making available Water purifier packets of iron sulphate and calcium chloride [a CDC and P&G innovation] in village shops at Rs.one per packet. The cost can be reduced by use of drumstick/strichnos potatorum for flocculation. The best place to treat water is at point of use and the best agent to do this is the mother. Matt Ryder Posted 16 years and 8 months ago Matt Ryder from Corvallis, OR comments on Do you worry about the water supply? In my mind, this is the most important challenge for the engineering community today. I feel this needs to be our top concern due to a Kantian analysis of issues in the world today. I feel the majority of people on the planet have not fulfilled enough of Maslow's needs in order to have much concern over a potential energy crisis, or even finding more "green" ways of growing crops or living in general. The main focus is living. In my mind, Kant would likely argue that it is immoral to have a world where some do not have access to clean drinking water, or life-saving medicines when needed. I feel our major concern should be, then, to address these concerns, starting with water. Displaying 1 - 20 of 45 1 2 3 Records per Page 5 10 20 50 All