Part II below...
Water, The New Oil
By Thomas Rooney
The population is consuming a dramatic amount of water in an unprecedented fashion, and the water supply is limited and going down fast. The other critical element is that the distribution systems that we use are in abject failure mode.
Booze Allen Hamilton published a study on infrastructure about a year ago. I think it was called, "Lights, Water, Motion." Basically it was a study in the spring of 2007, in the wake of intensive collapse of infrastructure around the world.
"So," you might ask, "what's the price tag going to be in the next 25-30 years to repair infrastructure around the world?Their study came up with a staggering number... I think it was around $40 trillion over a 30-year period. The scale of the number is interesting and I encourage you to read the study.
Now, what if I told you that water-related infrastructure represents 60% of the entire bill. The amount of money required to refurbish water infrastructure combined, in other words, is a staggering number. How do you get to that point? There are 700,000 miles of water lines in the United States alone, for starters. Add to that sewage line and you'll be more than double that. Currently, water systems, if they've maintained the way they are right now, will take somewhere in the order of 900 years to totally replace.
Water systems and water pipes and so on have a useful life of anywhere from 50-100 years. One would suggest therefore that you have to replace 1/75th of your water infrastructure every year. The very best places around the world are replacing about 1/200th of it, or operating on 200-year cycles.
Why do politicians do that? Well, because they can...and they've subsequently gone to horrific levels of failures.
Most of our world's infrastructure was built between the years of 1945-1965, the economic boom years after World War II. Whether if it was reconstruction in Europe or GI Joe coming home to suburbia in the United States, a tremendous percentage of this infrastructure was built in the two decades immediately after World War II. In the earliest years after the War, you couldn't get steel and some of the most common building materials. So new fangled building materials came about - reinforced concrete pipes and so forth.
You'll actually see certain cities where the water infrastructure is in horrible shape because some of it was built at the turn of the century...that's the 1900's, mind you. So we're seeing a jump in failure of water infrastructure. In fact, 15-45% of all drinking water is lost to leaks. That's a pretty wide spectrum, and it may actually be wider than that.
You take a look at places around the world, like New Deli in India, which loses between 60-80% of its water through its pipes. I'll actually argue with you that if you went to Wikipedia and punched in something that lost 80% of what goes through, you wouldn't actually call it a pipe, you would call it a sprinkler's system or something like that. The rational as to why it's so high is actually that the government in effect allows people to tap - they don't crack down on people that break into the pipes and take the water for humanitarian needs and reasons. But you'd still actually argue that the amount of water leaking out of pipes in India would be in the order of about 50-60%. Part of that is because there is a tremendous amount of infrastructure that dates back to its years as a British colony, some 50 years ago, that has been under-maintained since then.
Hong Kong loses roughly a third of the water that passes through its pipes... Sydney 35%... Philadelphia 30-35%. Places throughout the state of California lose 10-25%. You can go around the world and look at these locations. You go to London, England and see 35% water leakage. This is pretty interesting when you talk about something that is as precious as water. It's going through infrastructure that loses more than 1/3 of it and yet we don't take care of it.
Interestingly enough, the water cycle – when we take water out of a river or aquifers, put it through pipes, process it at a water treatment facility, put it through more pipes, send it to this hotel, or to your home, or to a business - typically gets used one time. It is then piped to sewage treatment facilities, then the sewage treatment facility treats it and it is typically routed back to the same river. It's rarely put back to an aquifer, by the way. That is not a closed loop, and its very hard to recharge an aquifer, or shall I say its expensive.
But has it reached the point where politicians even care? The fact is the matter is yes. If you take a look at global warming, it brought a lot of attention to these environmental issues. Interestingly enough, in Beijing, one of the most significant concerns the Chinese government has is with regard to the water supply. I think most people have heard about the Three Gorges Dam.
How many people know that they have spent $60 billion to dig a canal from the south to the north in time for the water for the Beijing Olympics. That's twice as much mony as the famous Three Gorges Damn. Why? Because a very large portion of the Chinese population lives in the north, where there is no water.
Then the news agency out of Beijing came out about a year ago and said, "Don't worry if you're an athlete and you come to the Olympics. We will have clean water in the Olympic village." Well, that is a very small area and they refer to bottled water for most of the other areas. Then recently it was disclosed that more than 50% of the bottled water in Beijing is counterfeit. Its just tap water! In fact, they showed an example of it and it's actually colored!
Certain ministers were executed in china over the issue. It was such a devastating problem. Monks from Tibet may be a great concern, but if a large number of people are sickened or cannot drink water come games time, that could be a more devastating issue in regards to the coming out party that China is trying to throw.
At a larger level, take a look at Turkey, Syria, and Iraq over the Euphrates Rivers. Most of the leadership and the United Nations are referring to the fact that in the 21st century the most dramatic wars are likely to be fought would be over water. You don't have to go very far to talk to people about that. Palestine has to get it from Israel. It's a fascinating element. Your likely to see very serious conflict in the middle east over water rights.
Compounding these factors is the fact that you can't import water. Water is basically one one-thousandths of the value of oil. Arguably, therefore, it is a thousand times more expensive to move per unit of value. So you can't transport it. Competing population will fight for water. It's a zero-sum game. It's my water in a river or your water.
Last but not least, I'll just leave this in your mind. One of the most critical elements that people are starting to understand is that water and energy are linked. The reference is to the water-energy nexus. It takes a tremendous amount of water to create energy and it takes a tremendous amount of energy to create water. So as we see energy fly out of control, water is flying with it and constraining it. If you talk to anyone in the power generation industry they will tell you that they need three things: One is a fuel source, two is a transmission line and three is a water source. Roughly 40% of the water extracted from rivers in the United States goes to cooling power generation. Effectively, you can't put a power generation facility somewhere if you don't have a water supply.
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