why do they tell us to conserve water if there is so much water all around us?

Question

i told my 9 year old son to try to conserve the water, and he asked me why, he's pretty smart so i try to answer his questions correctly

Answer 1

Most of our drinking water comes from wells or large lakes. Many of these are replenished by either ground water, [which flows from aquifers,(beneath the ground)], or from snow or rain runoff. Many aquifers are being destroyed by being cut off due to the construction of highways and roads...or diverted for construction purposes. We have droughts in parts of the world at times, which causes rivers to run low therefore lakes are low. Also, irrigation lowers the levels of lakes, rivers, and wells. Irrigation is important to the agricultural industry....[all the spinach that kids won't eat, etc.]
Although we are surrounded by oceans, these are salt water, therefore would have to be converted into potable [drinkable] water, which costs tax dollars. There are some complexes which are doing this, but they are usually funded by private corporations as experimental at this time.
Hope this at least hints at an answer, as the question is very complex.
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Answer 2

If you use water from your city's water supply, then that water has been treated and cleaned for household use. That process adds chemicals like chlorine to the water and removes water from a natural surface water source or underground source. So even if water is abundant and inexpensive, wasting water causes more water to be treated, more chemicals to be used, and more water to be removed from the source.

If you use water from a well, you should realize that many aquifers (underground water sources) are being overdrafted. That means that we take water out faster than it is being replaced. Overdrafting leads to such problems as collapse of the aquifer (compressing the porous layer so it won't hold water any more) salt water intrusion in places near the shore, and so on.

It's also important to conserve resources just because it's sound, sustainable thinking. There's a system of belief called the "frontier ethic". The three main ideas of the frontier ethic are that: 1) Earth has such vast resources that we'll never run out; 2) resources are meant for people to use; and 3) we are most successful when we control nature. Obviously, those ideas belong in the past. The opposite of the frontier ethic is called the sustainable ethic. If we apply the ideas to water, the sustainable ethic says:
1) Earth does not have an infinite amount of fresh water available, even if fresh water is renewable through the water cycle. Groundwater is not renewable when we consider the rate at which we remove groundwater.
2) Water is not made for people to use any more than any other species or process. We aren't separate from nature, but we are a part of nature and we rely on its cycles.
3) When we try to control natural systems such as the water cycle we can not calculate all the factors that affect such a system. So we thought it was a good idea to make large scale dams to form reservoirs and generate electricity. However, we didn't foresee that the dams would interfere with fish migration, the reservoirs would fill with silt, the river below the dam would suffer temperature swings, the dams can fail catastrophically, ecosystems would become unbalanced, sometimes leading to increases in parasites, flood plains would become infertile without the periodic deposit of silt carried by floodwaters, and so on. We can't know all of that.

Congratulate your son for thinking like a scientist. Scientists always want to know why. Very good sign there.

Answer 3

The earth is made up mostly of water, but most of the water is salt water, fresh water makes up only a small portion of the total water supply. Many places face drought conditions so water conservation is important.

Answer 4

We have water for a mean time when there is a stock of water in a basin
In a year, some times there are rain for some months, sometimes none
So, some of the water is reserve for the some months that have not enough water

Answer 5

Show your son common water, like a puddle or birdbath or stream, the sea. Ask him if he wants to drink that kind of water versus what comes out of the tap. Explain that most of the world is not as fortunate as the West in that we have lots of good drinking water, and most countries no not. At that age he should realize that just because he has ... say ... 'a gallon of ice cream' ... that doesn't mean he should eat/keep i it all for himself.

Answer 6

Because there is a shortage of fresh water due to widespread drought, climate change and ground pollution. Right now it's considered too expensive to desalinate sea water.

Answer 7

True, there is a lot of water all around us, but if water is 'wasted' then it generates more work, cost, pollution, etc, in order to re-process the water for human use (e.g. processing at sewage plants, municipal water facilities, and so on).

Answer 8

because a lot of the water is ocean water and purifying it requires a lot of energy and most energy sources emit gases in to the atmosphere which causes global warming and nobody wants that to happen

Answer 9

1/4 og our water is fresh the rest? saltwater--- undrinkable