Water is an essential source of life on earth. Globally water
crises are rising; people from around the world are struggling to access the
quantity and quality of water they need for drinking, cooking, bathing, hand
washing, and growing their food.
Globally, 844 million
people lack access to clean water. Without clean, easily accessible water,
families and communities are in poverty for generations.
Children and women are
most worst affected – children because they are more vulnerable to diseases of dirty
water and women and girls because they often bear the burden of carrying water
for their families for an estimated 200 million hours each day.
Urban growth of
population and less reliable precipitation patterns due to climate change are
putting pressure on cities' drinking water supplies globally.
Nowadays, water
treatment technologies are improving and becoming cheaper. These combined
conditions have led urban water supply managers to look favorably on a
non-traditional drinking water source.
Purifying sewage play a
vital role in meeting drinking water quality standards. A process known as
potable water reuse is technically feasible and can be cost-effective for
augmenting urban water supplies. For these reasons, potable water reuse systems
are becoming popular in the United States, Singapore and Australia, and other
places.
Watershed and sewer shed
a reuse water technology
A watershed is a
basin-shaped land area defined by high points (Ridges) and low points
(receiving water body). Suppose an umbrella turned upside down in the rain, and
how water would flow and collect in the center.
Since rain falls
everywhere, all land is part of the watershed with a receiving body of water.
Water "sheds" or flows of the ridges down the slope and into the
lowest-lying water body may be a lake, reservoir, or river. As water flows
downhill, it is also absorbed into the ground, lessening the amount that ends
up directly running into the water body.
And when sewage
infrastructure is constructed, drainage patterns in a watershed are altered.
A sewershed is an area
of land and how water flows through the built environment; over the streets,
sidewalks, buildings, and how it drains into pipes that carry it to treatment
plants or surrounding water bodies.
But today, the watershed
was left out of previous watershed protection efforts. Because it is
increasingly integral to urban water supplies. A watershed protection approach
is needed alongside watershed protection to preserve the safety of drinking
water supplies.
Health risk due to
contaminated water
Sewershed and watershed
protection is essential because today, dirty water and poor sanitation are
linked to the transmission of diseases such as cholera, diarrhea, dysentery,
hepatitis A, typhoid, and polio. Absent, inadequate, or inappropriately managed
water and sanitation services expose individuals to preventable health risks.
Globally 15% of patients
develop an infection during a hospital stay, which is much more significant in
low-income countries.
Mismanagement in urban,
industrial, and agriculture wastewater means the drinking-water of hundreds of
millions of people is dangerously contaminated or chemical polluted.
According to the WHO,
some 829,000 people are estimated to die each year from diarrhea due to unsafe
drinking water, sanitation, and hand hygiene. Even though diarrhea is mostly
preventable, and the deaths of 297 000 children aged under five years could be
avoided every year if these risk factors were addressed where water is not
readily available.
So the diarrhea is the
most widely known disease linked to contaminated food and water; however, there
are other hazards.
In 2017, over 220
million people required preventive treatment for schistosomiasis, an acute and
chronic disease caused by parasitic worms contracted through exposure to
infested water.
In several parts of the
world, insects that live or breed in water carry diseases such as dengue fever.
Some of these insects, known as vectors, breed in clean, rather than dirty
water, and household drinking water containers can serve as breeding grounds.
Why is sewershed
protection essential?
Sewershed protection is
an essential proactive approach to address the potential health risks
associated with contaminants in sewage.
To protect Sewershed,
paired with treatment technologies, can safeguard drinking water supplies by
preventing discharges of chemicals that can pass through water treatment
systems.
Similarly, watershed
protection features should apply to sewershed security: prioritizing resource
allocation, ensuring stakeholder involvement in the development of goals, and
finding integrated solutions.
Changes such as these
are foundational to a sewershed protection approach. They help to mitigate the
risks posed by using sewage as a source of water supply, identify sewer sheds
where potable water reuse is a less desirable option, and protect public health
in the era of potable water reuse.
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