Imagine you’re a kid again and your parents are taking you on the many summer vacation to a local water park. Put on your bathing shorts and get into the car or SUV and drive about two hours until you reach the destination. You enter the park and treated to a variety of smells and the sounds of running fresh clean water everywhere. You can wait to get on the first ride. You see a giant water slide in the distance and run to get in line. You spend thirty minutes in that line and it’s finally your turn. You climb the stairs you get to the top and see the blue vista in front of you. You hop on the slide and let gravity take you down the slide until you reach the bottom and expecting fresh cool water you get buried in salty sand. The 70.6 percent of the Earth crust is covered in water, but only 1.6% of that is fresh water. If the water parks we all remember as a child reflected the reality of fresh water scarcity the planet has, it would it be rather a desert park. There would be no giant water slides, large pool areas, boat rides, spray fountains, or other wasteful water attractions that are a pleasure to see.
People don’t really see water has a issue in the United States because it is cheap, and is accessible practically everywhere, which is why it has become a problem. Poorly planned water systems are draining ecosystems of water that takes centuries to recharge and have vast impacts on the environment. Urbanizing the desert has led to a crisis in western states that are continuously draining there underground aquifers. Instead of adjusting to the environment that city sprung, the city planners instead conformed to the American tradition of surburbia, watered lawns, and water parks. Cities such as Las Vegas are after all located in the dessert, and some strict rules for water usage should be common place for that type of environment. But instead of adopting water efficient technologies, ordinances, and other means to replenish and conserve the water used by the city’s residents and businesses, instead used as much as they possible could thinking the wells would last forever. If the city ran out of water, they would have only themselves to blame.
Considering the previous case, imagine now that the water park instead traveled to where you live. Changing ecosystems and moving rivers have become common place when convenient. But imagine if we move a river and unintended consequence was that we have created a man made flood plain right at you from door. People are running motor boats down your street. And when the water finally subsides, there is the damage, the mold, and the destroyed economy along with it. There would have never been a flood there if they hadn’t move that river and created a flood plain. But who can you blame, the river was in the way, it was too much water. Another example of how we don’t build within our means when it comes to the environment. Now imagine that the river was where a city or town dumped its sewage instead of cleaning the sewage to “acceptable” levels and putting back into the ecosystem. Not only would the environment be polluted but your home as well.
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| Stephen Mally - New York Times |
To put it simply the Water Park Conundrum is a problem of how we change the environment to suit are needs are unsustainable to the development of our society. The water park serves no purpose if there isn’t any water and a water deserted city serves no people. An inconvenient water park isn’t fun and has well as a house underwater. The problem can be solve if we are willing to change how we use water every day.
References
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/question157.htm
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