Wasted Water is a problem that is gaining more and more traction as the pre-eminent issue of our times, even if it’s one that most people don’t think too much about. I have said before that the next world war will probably be over water rights even though we think of such a catastrophe occurring because of ideological differences and/or meglomanical dictators. In reality, there are many small wars going on right now over water rights, throughout the world.
On a very simple level, I remember when I was president of a condominium in Puerto Rico many years ago, that the one power I had to bring incalcitrant homeowners into line with condominium regulations, was to cut off their water. You can survive without electricity, you can’t survive without water.
This year, Italy has suffered its worst drought in decades. Water shortages on Capri became so dire that authorities temporarily banned ferries bringing tourists to the island. Imagine that! Lack of rainfall was certainly a problem, but the majority of the issue was down to bad infrastructure. Capri looses 40% of its drinking water to leaks in the water pipes, and Capri is definitely not alone.
Leaky water pipes are a global problem. In Europe, loss of water due to bad pipes is calculated at 25% of total supply – Bulgaria’s statistics show a 60% loss. In the U.S. the figures are roughly the same as Europe.
Tackling the problem is monumental. In Europe alone, there are approximately four million kilometers of drinking water pipes – enough to wrap around the Earth’s equator a hundred times. The fact that most of these pipes are underground also exacerbates the detection-of-leaks problem.
As a relevant aside there, I should mention a conversation I had many years ago with a water engineer from the British Water Company Severn Trent, who was advising the Puerto Rico Government on water infrastructure. He commented that most drinking water pipes run in the same channels as sewage pipes, which means that you definitely want the water pipes to leak inside out…not outside in. Despite that truth, the leakage in the world’s drinking water infrastructure is enormous, and unsustainable when many areas are running out of water due to population growth and climate change.
Technology is beginning to help with specialized leak detection systems. On Capri’s neighboring islands of Ischia and Procida, a company called Xylem has introduced a solution that can “listen” to the hissing of leaks as it travels through the pipes, thus locating them. The system has allowed the islands to reduce their leakage rates 20%, saving Ischia 50 liters of water every second – one third of the island’s consumption.
Other technologies involve inserting plastic pipes within the old pipes, rather than digging the old ones up and replacing them. Pipebots, an academic collaboration in the U.K. is designing a robot system that can travel through water pipes and identify leaks and potential pipe failures. The inspection robot is then followed by a robot repair “bot” which will fix the problem. The group hope their system will receive permission to deploy in drinking water systems soon.
The major restrictions of all of these new technologies are scale and cost – 4 million kilometers is a lot of pipe to cover. The EU has made 12.6 billion euros available to member states to combat this problem – similar funds are available in the U.K. and the U.S. However, this is just a drop in the proverbial bucket – if you will excuse the analogy.
The problem is almost beyond comprehension in terms of size, but climate change and unrestrictive population growth means the day of reckoning is creeping closer for all of us. Humans, like all other animals on the planet cannot exist without water. It really is the biggest existential threat we face.
