During the spring of my freshman year, May 2010, there was a huge water main leak in Weston, Mass. A pipe with a diameter of 10 feet was leaking eight million gallons of water an hour into the Charles River. The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority declared a Boil Water Notice, and for three days, the campus turned into a refugee camp. Those days, you showered fewer times, brushed your teeth with care, and lived in fear of what you were digesting. In Dewick, we ate cold cuts on paper plates, while drinking small plastic cups of boiled water from a cooler.
The leak at Weston was an unfortunate and short crisis, but the more frightening situation is the current waste of water today. Today, on a particularly hygienic day, you probably took a shower, brushed your teeth and used the bathroom. Let's say you did a load of laundry and washed some dishes. Already, you have used more than 100 gallons of water. Sometime in the course of the day, I will assume you consumed some assortment of food. It took seven gallons of water to make that small cup of tea. Did you have a salad? That took about 15 gallons of water. According to my hydraulics professor, Dr. Shafiqul Islam, it takes 1000 gallons of water to process and prepare a single pound of beef. By the end of the day, the volume of water you used might come close to filling half of a South Hall single.
Although some people seem to waste the water as much as they can, we are clearly capable of conserving water without living in panic. I have seen the practice of groups on campus that choose otherwise. At the EarthFest two years ago, some Crafties handed out bricks labeled "Weapon of Mass Conservation." We were supposed to leave the bricks in the toilet tanks to reduce the volume of water it takes to flush a toilet. The brick they handed me was too pretty to put in the tank. The Tufts Mountain Club (TMC) also lives by, "If it's yellow, let it mellow." At the Loj, I was also advised to not shower if I could help it. I can safely say that the no-shower policy was easily accepted by most of us at the Loj. Earthfest and TMC acknowledge that water is not infinitely flowing. It comes from the ground under the football field, the nearby lakes and, indirectly, our produce uses water from abroad. In Mexico City, city officials pumped out so much water from the ground that the soil sunk down a foot. Residents had to build new doors. If it stopped raining in Boston, our water supply would only last until my 24th birthday.
In my hydraulics course, Dr. Islam gives a unique perspective on water distribution. As a joint professor of Water Diplomacy at Fletcher, he studies the problems of water distribution across the globe. This means that not only do I have to relearn Fluid Dynamics and calculate things like the speed of water through a pipe, but I also have to define water sustainability and calculate my water footprint. In class, Dr. Islam stresses that there are approximately 3,800 cubic kilometers of fresh water globally available right now, enough for 100 gallons per person per day, but clean water is still not available to 1.1 billion people in the world. Dr. Islam and other professionals tackle these complex issues on the website called WaterDiplomacy.com. They edit a listing of interesting water information and cases called AquaPedia, and answer questions on a public forum.
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JasminSadegh is a junior majoring in civil engineering. She can be reached at Jasmin.Sadegh@tufts.edu.
