Article 1

Monday, August 21, 2017

9:59 AM
1. The three types of water are peak renewable, peak unrenewable, and peak ecological waters.
Renewable refers to water that is limited by its flow over time while nonrenewable refers to
groundwater that is produces at rates much slower than it is recharged, making for peak and
decline cycles. Lastly, ecological water is the point where ecological disruptions are more
expensive than the value of the water.
2. While both peak water and oil follow a bell-curve, water is a renewable and non-renewable
resource. Another key difference is oil is solely a consumptive productive, meaning all that is
produced will be used. On the other hand, water is a mixture of consumptive and
nonconsumptive as it is used for washing. Lastly, oil is in a family fuels that can be replaced
when resources are unavailable, but water cannot be. Thus, families will be forced to move
to new places or pay higher amounts to extract salts from the ocean water. This analogy is
important because as we continue to demand more water, there will come a point when we
reach the limit and there will be a decline, which can be detrimental to all life forms.
3. The shift in 1970 can be explained by the improvement of water efficiency, the structural
changes within the US economy, the Clean Water Act, and "physical, economic, and
environmental constraints on access to new supplies."
4. The hard path refers to infrastructure such as dams and aqueducts, while the soft path is a
complement to those structures, but it takes into account environmental issues via
decentralized locations. Some environmental impacts of the hard water path include
extinction of fauna, aqueducts do not reach deltas of many important rivers, loss of habitat,
nutrient depletion, loss of birds, and shoreline depletion.
5. The most grave problem is a failure to meet basic human needs, which leads to millions of
water related diseases. This causes 2 to 5 million deaths per year.
6. Water withdrawals began to stabilize as the environmental effects of dams were reviewed.
7. The hard path cost is $180 billion per year while the soft path is between 10 and 25 billion
per year.