The worldwide ‘Thirst’ for clean drinking water
April 11 (NPR) – The typical American uses 99 gallons of water a day for activities like washing clothes, bathing, toilet-flushing and cooking. But that amount doesn’t even come close to the amount of water used on a daily basis by electrical power plants. Each day, coal, nuclear and natural gas plants use about five times the amount of water used on a daily basis by all American households combined — including 250 gallons of water per American per day to generate our daily electricity usage. “So your flat-screen TV has a little hidden water spigot running to it,” says investigative reporter Charles Fishman. “[We use] 10 gallons of water an hour every hour of every day just to power our computers and our refrigerators and our washing machines at home.” In a Fast Company cover story published in 2007, Fishman examined how the bottled water industry turned what was once a free natural resource into a multibillion-dollar business. He expands his investigation of the water industry in the new book The Big Thirst, which examines the future of a natural resource that, Fishman says, we can no longer take for granted. “The last 100 years has been the golden age of water in the developed world: water that has been safe, unlimited and essentially free,” he tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “But that era is over. We will not, going forward, have water that has all three of those qualities at the same time: unlimited, unthinkingly inexpensive and safe.” Currently, one out of six gallons of water acquired, treated and pumped by water utilities in the U.S. leaks back into the ground before it can be used by a home or business. This, says Fishman, will change — but only if technology at water utility companies starts to improve. …
