Why Protect Water?
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Why do we need to protect water?
WaterSmart Niagara is all about protecting Niagara's watersheds While the need to protect a precious resource may seem obvious to some, many people do not really understand the issue. In fact, research by Conservation Ontario identified four common misunderstandings, or myths, about our water.
4 Myths About Water In Niagara
MYTH 1: We have lots of water so there's nothing to worry about.
FACT: We are surrounded by water - especially in Niagara -- so we think we have an unlimited supply. But we don't. No new water is produced - it's just recycled year after year in a process known as the Water Cycle. When we take water from our sources faster than they can replenish themselves, we face shortages and experience water bans. We need to be aware of how much water we are taking out of the system right now, so we have enough for later.
MYTH 2: Water is a natural resource so it should be free.
FACT: Clean, safe water is NOT free. According to Natural Resources Canada, there are three major costs associated with establishing and maintaining a water system:
Water supply: Water usually has to be pumped, stored, moved and treated to make it available in safe form for consumers. It then has to be taken away after use. At all of these stages, infrastructure is needed.Infrastructure maintenance: Maintenance includes on-going maintenance, but also periodically being upgrading and being increased in capacity.
Administration: There are numerous overhead costs associated with running a water system. Managing and operating a municipal water system is costly. In general, funds collected from regional taxpayers across Canada have not covered an adequate share of such costs. It has become crucial to conserve and limit water usage to prevent escalating costs from affecting the end-user.
MYTH 3: We are already careful about conserving water.
FACT: Canadians consume the second highest amount of water in the world and pay the least for it. We use more than twice as much water per person, per day than people in European nations, like France, and yet we pay a quarter of the price. Because we think we have an abundance of fresh water and pay so little for it, most of us aren't aware of how much we actually use or how we can make better use of it. The good news is that we can easily cut our water use by following WaterSmart practices. Most of us won't even notice the difference, but our water systems will.
MYTH 4: We don't have to protect sources of water, since we already treat water and make it clean enough to drink.
FACT: Although we treat water through Niagara Region treatment plants and make it safe to drink, it would be cheaper and more effective to protect water from contaminants in the first place, rather than having to clean it up later. The engineering industry has discovered that it is significantly more expensive to treat water through a purification process rather than protect it at its source.
WaterSmart Niagara aims to eliminate these myths by raising awareness of the facts about water, helping people to change their water-use habits and physically protecting the Niagara watershed - most especially ground and surface water resources. WaterSmart Niagara provides a means for tracking and coordinating activities, builds on past and current initiatives, and identifies future actions for watershed stakeholders.