Water is life. Life is Water. Without Water life wouldn't be
possible in this world. It is sad to add here that without us, water, our
planet and all other living beings would be safe. We are the ultimate in
evolution and we are the only beings who know about how water is important and
vital for the environmental balance. But still we are the ones who are
polluting it out of greed, lack of technology and ignorance.
Nature has created a water circle that maintains the water
balance and we, the humans created a water cycle of our own that imbalances the
environment. In this blog we will be discussing all about water right from how
it got its entry to the world to treatment, utilization, recycling and much
more.
In this post I shall discuss about the water cycle created
by nature and by us and how that affects our environment.
Water Cycle created by nature:
Sun is the major source of energy for our planet and it also
helps us in many ways for sustaining the lives of living creatures in the
world. Two third of our earth surface is covered by water and that means that
water is receiving most of the heat radiated by the sun.
Heat of the Sun, increases the vapor pressure of the
surface water and the vapors get mixed with atmospheric air creates humidity.
Humidity will be higher near water bodies like sea or big lakes. These water
vapors get accumulated in the atmosphere and form clouds in the sky that are
black in color. The clouds are formed mainly by the inter-molecular attraction
and gravitational pull of groups of molecules.
The clouds get concentrated by water and when subjected to
sudden cooling or its path is blocked by a mountain then the water condenses
and falls as rain.
Rain water is fresh water and is the purest form of water.
But after its formation by condensation it travels through the atmosphere and
reaches the surface of the earth. And during the process it gets acidic because
of lightning. Lightning creates a high voltage current which produces enormous
heat. Under this heat, Nitrogen in the atmosphere reacts with oxygen and forms
oxides of Nitrogen. These oxides dissolve in water and nitric acid is formed. This
is the reason why the purest form of water is turning acidic when it reaches
the earth surface.
Rain feed rivers, lakes, reservoirs and oceans with water.
Rain water is the major source of fresh water for rivers, lakes and in some parts
of the world where a proper storage facility is not there, the water is
directly used for agriculture.
This water again gets evaporated and forms clouds in the sky
and fall back as rain and this cycle is continuing for a real long time and is
the reason of many of the climatic conditions and changes we experience in this
world. This water cycle is created by nature and we are being showered with its
benefits that sustains life in earth.
Water Cycle created by Humans:
Water is an essential commodity for all living beings and we
as humans use it for drinking and cooking purposes that are essential. As our
necessities grew our usage of water multiplied. We started using water for
cleaning, washing and bathing purposes that initially started pollution.
As scientific advances started changing the life style of
humans, usage of water also increased in industries, laboratories and
households. O an average every human in the world is using about 80 liters of
water every day. Out of this only 2 to 3 litres of water is consumed directly
by drinking and cooking. Rest of the water is used for washing, cleaning and
other purposes. Whatever be the utilization, water is let out immediately but
not in its pure form but with lots of impurities. If you just consider 6000
millions of humans living in this earth then we are wasting an approximate quantity
of 480000 million liters of water every day. That makes it 175200000 million
litres of water every year.
So we were almost polluting 175200000 million liters of
water every year and discharging them to oceans. This had been the case for a
long, long period before we understood the enormity of this pollution and took corrective
measures.
Before taking the corrective measures the cycle was simply
like this:
Sourcing – Utilization and discharge.
Once we understood the implications of such discharges we
started treating the waste water before discharging them to the oceans. Even
though we have fully understood the importance of waste water purification, we
still could not maintain the waste water quality in most of the countries.
There are many reasons for this. Lack of infra-structure, lack of technologies,
greed for money and more profits, negligence and ignorance. Now the revised
cycle of water made by man looks like this
Sourcing, water treatment, utilization, waste water
treatment and discharge back to the source.
There are strict pollution control norms for discharging
waste water and in spite of that the cycle is simply not followed in many
countries and places that is slowly but strongly deteriorating the water
source. When this continues, our next generations might land into a situation
where finding pure water itself would be a problem.
