With the rapid growth of the world's economy and the development of the urban construction, people can live their lives more conveniently. Almost all kinds of resources and services are getting closer and touchable to everyone. This expected life will become the new trend of the urbanization. Moreover, behind this handy urban life, it costs a profusion of resources, which includes numerous nonrenewable resources like water. Resources consumption in cities, however, exceed that of the rural areas. Given that the most significant area of the earth is covered by water masses, an impression that every individual has enough water supply which cannot be exhausted is created, but the truth is if we keep this intemperate concept, there would be no more water on earth anymore. Thus how every person conserves water has been raising the alarm in the recent past. Water is one of the most crucial natural resources not only for consumption and domestic use but also for commercial and recreational purposes.
However, with this large scale of water being on used on a daily basis, lack of proper water disposal from industries into the river or ocean may cause the pollution to this sources of water. The wastewater is mostly diluted and directed in the water streams thus affecting and reducing the availability of fresh water supplies. Polluted water always finds its way into the oceans and the lakes and its ends up having harmful effects to the marine environment which is a habitat for most marine animals. Thus for us to protect aquatic lives and maintain clean water bodies, we need to come up with means and programs for proper water disposal.
Most of the developed cities such as the New York city have a well-established recycling and disposal water system. Enormous people in the cities today requires a large quantity of water and how one manages the little amount he/she matters a lot. It is the duty of each person find a way in which one can reuse the water used as it is of great concern to the government and the non-governmental organizations concerned.
Michael Bloomberg who was a mayor in New York City invented a project for maximizing water usage known as PlaNYC. This project was aimed to guide the city on sustainable development aiming at developing a greener city in 25 years (Feifel, 2010). The project included the various aspects of city planning such as housing and the transport sectors. However, water being an essential for human existence it needs to be taken with the highest priority. This project has contributed to the New York city has an upper class of wastewater recycling system thus standing out from all the other cities. It is a government installed current and automatic meter reading machine to improve the efficiency of water usage with the invention of plaNYC project.
This meter reading machine meant to remind people of the amount of water they had used at all the times thus enabling people to track or reduce on their usage and also they can be able to know in case of any leakage and repair them on time rather than paying for the extra bill. This used water from the households is normally realized into the seas, lakes, and ocean usually has negative effects on the marine lives ( WWAP, 2017). Therefore, there is a need to find out and come up with the best solution for wastewater disposal thus maintaining clean water as well as keeping the marine life safe. Due to this project plan, the water consumption levels in this city decreased by 200 million gallons in a day, and this can be verified online ( Bloomberg, 2011).
This helps the government monitor the levels of water consumption and enable it to allocate water more efficiently. plaNYC has set a condition for an increase of water conservation, the government should lead by example by saving every tone of water, and it was proved to be very effective. The New York government set all the buildings each as a unit to enhance conservation of water. Also, rebuild the old toilets to more efficient and better for water saving. Establishing these advanced toilets thought the whole city helps to huge amounts of water.
Between the year 1994 to 1997, a total of 1.3 million toilets were replaced using this program thus decreasing the average consumption by 70mgd and reducing the usage of water by 37% in the renovated buildings (Bloomberg, 2011).These programs help people in saving on this costs although it did not reflect in their payrolls and also saved a lot of water in the long run. Since this project did yield positive results as it helps people save large amounts of water thus enabling them to save more. Conservation of water should not only be taught as a subject, but people apply it in their day to day lives. Due to the large population in the New York City, the level of water consumption is very high thus even the water in the sewer can is also part of the resource in this city. Water that is regarded as waste can be recycled and be reused thus should not be wasted.
PlaNYC assisted the New York government reform the treatment plant for the wastewater making all the plants attain secondary standards, therefore, increasing the quality of water that has been used and can thus be reused over and over again. It was however observed that the 14 plants, treated 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater on a daily basis (The City of New York, 2017). When this wastewater is turned into clean water, this contributes highly to water conservation. The New York government aims to collect was to collect more wastewater through the expansion of the sewer system and find a solution on how to collect rainwater in the sewerage system. Hence in future, these sewers will collect more water thus reducing the disposal of water into the rivers, oceans and other clean water basis saving on a large quantity of water.
Water pollution is a severe challenge in the world today which needs to be addressed. With the innovations of industries, the amount of waste product is being emitted either into the water or the air. In most cases, the industrial waste contains numerous chemical substances, and if disposed of in the water bodies it leads to damage. As most industries dispose wastewater into the water bodies, it is the role of the government in ensuring that they set up the rule which restricts this. This can be seen from the case at the Gowanus Canal, which addressed on stagnant water, CSOs and odor by upgrading its Flushing Tunnel and expanding the capacity of the canal pumping station and building a new intercept sewerage system(Bloomberg, 2011). With close government inspection, water pollutants which bring unpleasant odor are removed. When polluted water is purified, the polluting agents cannot find their way into the water flow thus more water protected. Therefore citizens can be assured of quality water on a daily basis thus improving the usage of water to more efficient levels.
The plan used for the New York City can be considered more successful in the case of water utilization and conservational. With the mayor having in mind of a growing population in this city, the level of water consumption does not rise as expected, with the water consumption being less that of 50 years ago (Bloomberg, 2011).
By following the plaNYC project, it proves that there no barriers between the growth of economy and protection of the ecological system. If all the cities all over the world adapted to this guideline, this would prevent water pollution. Today water has become a major issue and its slowly becoming a global challenge, and it needs to be looked into carefully and if it is continuously ignored the limited available water sources will be exhausted.
For water conservation program to be successful, every individual must participate and pay attention to all the details. It is believed that if we save every drop of water eventually, we will have saved an incredible amounts. Modern cities need to upgrade to an eco-friendly approach to protect the planet. To attain this, there has to be a highly developed technology which modifies the quality of water and increase its efficiency. This technology may include advance water purifying equipment which can treat a lot of water at the same time. Thus every drop of water saved today maybe priceless in future because we all hope not to suffer from water problems in the future.
Works Cited
Bloomberg, Michael. PlaNYC: A greener, greater New York. New York: The City of New
York, 2011. Print. WWAP (United Nations World Water Assessment Programme). The United Nations World Water Development Report 2017: Wastewater, The Untapped Resource. Paris, UN
SCO. 2017. Feifel, Kirsten. "PlaNYC: A Comprehensive Sustainability Plan for New York City."
Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange. N.p., 7 Apr. 2010. Web. The City of New York, "New York Citys Wastewater." NYC Environmental Protection.
N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2017.
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