Water Conservation And Management

Learn about water resources,the use and application of water conservation measures in different contexts. Improve your capacity to design, implement and assess water management plans and procedures.Water is the most important resource to sustain life. All living organisms need water to survive. This course will teach you how to conserve this precious resource in various situations from the home environment to industry. Lesson cover water conservation at home, in the workplace, water management, conservation in primary production I & II, health, recycling and more.

Lesson Structure

There are 10 lessons in this course:

1. Introduction to water conservation
2. Water conservation at home
3. Water conservation in the workplace
4. Water management
5. Water conservation in Primary Production I
6. Water conservation in Primary Production II
7. Water conservation in Services industries
8. Water conservation and Health
9. Water conservation in other sectors
10. Water treatment, reuse and recycling

Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.

Aims

• Explain the importance of water in the world and the reasons for its sustainable conservation and management.
• Explain the importance of water conservation and methods to save water at the workplace.
• Explain the importance of water conservation and methods to save water at home.
• Explain water flow and quality control.
• Explain water audits and water management plans.
• Explain the importance of water conservation and methods to save water in Horticulture
• Explain the importance of water conservation and methods to save water in Agriculture.
• Explain the importance of water conservation and methods to save water in the Services Industry.
• Explain the importance of water conservation and methods to save water in the Health Industry and allied services.
• Explain the importance of water conservation and methods to save water in other occupations.
• Explain water sanitation and wastewater treatment methods and the difference with water reuse and recycling.

Extract from Course Notes

 WHY TO CONSERVE WATER: PERSONAL, TERRITORY AND GLOBAL SIGNIFICANCE

Human beings cannot survive more than 3 days without any source of water. Neither can other animals or plants. Water is life. Water is needed to move, eat, reproduce, work and think, in other words, to survive and to live.

Water resources are challenged in our world today due to pollution and overuse of the local resources. There are also fights for water between different users: farmers, people in cities and industries. There also rivers that cross frontiers, and thus there some problems in the sharing and use of the water between different countries. We are using much more water than what is really needed and available in many locations around the world.

This is due sometimes because of lack of water, but more often it is due to a bad management of the water resources available, bad or non existent urban planning and bad or non existent population planning.

We are also wasting our water resources when we are discharging our wastes and sewage into it, making the receiving waters unsuitable for life and in many cases even unsuitable for industrial or agricultural use.

These are the main reasons to preserve our water resources. There are many ways to do so. Water conservation needs to be addressed through the three environmental R’s:

Reduce

Reuse

Recycle

1. Reduce water use and water losses. This is also called water saving or minimization. Cleaner Production is a term used to describe all the actions taken to minimize the use of resources, water, energy or materials, that are used in our daily life (at home) and in our productive activities, such as industries, crops, health industries, office work (yes, water is also used, even minimally), etc.

Water reduction is the first step in water conservation as it is the most important factor in using water more efficiently. We reduce our water use at home when we use “water savers” in the shower. In gardening we save water when we use drip irrigation, instead of surface watering.

2. Reuse: Once water use has been reduced, we can study how we can use water that has already been used once. This is done normally with water that is not heavily contaminated with wastes. We can reuse shower water, but not water used to flush the toilets.

We are reusing water at home when we are using our grey water (from washing) to water the garden. Some industries can reuse water so effectively that they don’t produce any waste water. There are nowadays very efficient technologies to that effect.

3. Recycle. This is the third step, and generally it includes some type or technology the clean the water and use these recovered water. In rural houses, water from flushing the toilets can be cleaned with several simple and affordable technologies. This water can then be used to water trees. In Israel, in very dry areas with great shortage of water, sewage water is cleaned and disinfected so well, that it is being used to supply part of the drinking water. It is an expensive technology, but it can be done if there is no another solution to provide water to the population.