The situation is quite serious - groundwater is important source for water use, including drinking water, and if it gets contaminated, it's very costly and difficult to clean.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There's over a billion people on this planet that don't have access to clean drinking water.
Hydraulic fracturing requires massive amounts of water. Disposing of the toxic wastewater, as well as accidental spills, can contaminate drinking water and harm human health.
More than a billion people lack adequate access to clean water.
There are places in the world that the power goes out in hospitals, and there isn't clean water, and it's horrific.
Drinking water that does not meet a federal health guideline will not necessarily make someone ill. Many contaminants are hazardous only if consumed for years. And some researchers argue that even toxic chemicals, when consumed at extremely low doses over long periods, pose few risks.
Fresh, clean water cannot be taken for granted. And it is not - water is political, and litigious. Transporting water is impractical for both political and physical reasons, so buying up water rights did not make a lot of sense to me, unless I was pursuing a greater fool theory of investment - which was not my intention.
We are wasting our water mostly by putting waste into it. One cubic meter of wastewater can pollute ten cubic meters of water. Discharging wastewater into oceans turns freshwater into the less useful salty stuff, and desalination is expensive.
The air that people breathe in many Chinese cities has become dangerously polluted. Their food supply is subject to constant contamination scandals. Now it appears that not merely stagnant ponds but the water people draw from deep underground is already tainted.
I want to bring clean water to people who do not have it. What I'm trying to do now is think of ways to build a well-drilling machine that is low-cost so people in rural areas can afford it. People in rural places could use the water for irrigation or for drinking.
For many of us, clean water is so plentiful and readily available that we rarely, if ever, pause to consider what life would be like without it.