Water has always been a driver of change, development, and
progress. Ever since humans began building and living in cities thousands of
years ago, the centralized water supply dictated exactly how and where they
could live. The appearance and disappearance of water corresponds throughout
history to the explosion and desolations of population centers.
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| The Anasazi Civilization left desolate urban empires when water ran out. |
The Hohokam and Anasazi tribes had lived in the southwestern
present day U.S. for thousands of years and built sprawling urban empires, but
in the 1400s they mysteriously disappeared, all because of a few bad years of
drought.
Obviously other factors are in play; armies conquer,
kingdoms go bankrupt, religious awakening sparks a mass pilgrimage, but most
huge history changers can be linked back to water. Plagues that killed of huge
portions of the population came from water borne bacteria. Poor irrigation
killed off crops that could not be regrown, and threw the country into a
famine. Contaminated water can drive civilizations into the ground, such as the
lead filled water systems of ancient Rome.
Water near main population centers provided those centers
with everything they needed. They provided access to trade. They allowed the
people to navigate more effectively. Open water gave them the ability to fish
and feed themselves. Bodies of water powered mills, allowing industry to
flourish, and made doing laundry possible with ease. Bodies of water provided
protection from foreign troops, purely from a geographical perspective, and in many
cultures they played a more spiritual role, such as that of the Ganges river in
India. Historically water has cleaned cities, washing trash and debris from the
streets and into runoff estuaries and ultimately the sea. In fact, this method
of streets becoming cleaner through the natural water cycle is still at work in
modern cities today.
As human technology has progressed, and water filters and
the like have allowed civilization to purify their water without the consent of
nature, consumption has exploded both in breadth and depth.
More of a focus on the importance of water and the
protection of water has come with time. Many politicians, organization, and
individuals have called for a stricter regulation on environmental impact, and
for a decrease in runoff pollution. Sustainable water use has become a rallying
cry for many environmentally conscious people, and terms like “smart growth,”
sustainability,” and low/no-impact development” are becoming more and more
popular.
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| A modern urban water system |
As industry and manufacturing explode, bodies of water be
they rivers, lakes, or oceans, are being more and more polluted. In the
interest of business, many of these environmental sacrifices are overlooked.
Consumption of water has skyrocketed,
and the natural system is having a hard time
keeping up with the demand of humans to produce so much clean water. Water
filters, water softeners, and the like put a further strain on the water system
by spewing salty brine into the environment.
That being said, new technologies are making effective water
management more possible than ever before. Although the problem is certainly
growing, our ability to deal with it as a society is growing in turn.
Eventually, as more and more awareness is raised, sustainable water use will be
achieved, and, although it maybe counter-intuitive, water may loose some of the
power it has wielded over humanity.
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