This is a good objective if it can be realized. It would eliminate water borne diseases and save medical revenue used to control, prevent and treat water related diseases. It could also enable a nation to redirect its finance to develop other economic fields. It would also make medical researchers to focus their attention on other diseases that are a threat to human life like cancer and HIV/AIDS.
This dream for enough clean, safe water to drink is hindered by many factors. It may be realized but the hurdles the project has to go through questions its success.
Developing countries are under the strain from diseases. These diseases like HIV/AIDS, osteoporosis, diabetes, cardiovascular disorders, accidents resulting into fractures like spinal, consume a large part of the budget in their management. These diseases affect active labor force and this negatively affects implementation of the dream. What labor force will the project use? Will a developing nation be able to provide enough, clean, safe water if its economic growth is a function of grand corruption?
There is a rapid growth rate of population in developing countries. Many of the greater population live in slums or ghettos. They live in structures whose owners are even too poor to make initial water-meter connection fee or pay water bills. These congested human settlements are characterized by high presence of low income earners’ who live on less than a dollar per day and poor domestic waste handling procedures. A great percentage of the population use borehole water. The boreholes are dug closer to open domestic waste trenches that link to highly contaminated tributaries that flow downstream. The flow of the eye-sore domestic waste is slow due to presence of non-biodegradable materials like broken plastics and plastic bags. The water eventually filters and is fetched by people living downstream who don’t treat it to kill germs or lower harmful dissolved chemical substances by adding alumina. Is this water safe to drink even if it is very clear?
In many industrial areas, harmful chemicals are emitted into the atmosphere. These fall back as contaminated rain and collected as safe water! Industries dispose untreated chemicals wastes to the environment, and these are washed by surface runoff. They affect the user directly on drinking the water or indirectly by being absorbed by plants and getting into the food chain.
In many countries, the water that is used in urban centers is got from dams or permanent rivers. Even if it is treated, can water treatment procedures that don’t eat into the profit of the company eliminate radio active substances, harmful chemical substances that found their way into the water through pollution of contaminated rain water? This implies the water is still contaminated and as people suffer from diseases that have no cure, due to somatic mutations, they rarely suspect water but pinch their lifestyles as a predisposing factor!
All is possible if pollution is controlled, proper procedures for disposal of chemical substances are put in place or if tertiary industries are established to convert waste products into use. Safety regulations should be put in place to avoid cases of radio active material leakages or explosion of nuclear plants. Every industrial set up should also have clear policies to manage its chemical waste products or recycle them. Until these guidelines are followed, more medical and social research work would always recommend proper management of waste products, more protocols concerning global warming would be proposed if the current ones can’t be attained and the need to go green would be a dream!
