The ongoing shortages of drinking water in Juba is a national disaster in the making
By Lino Lual Lual, Juba, South Sudan
December 6, 2015 (SSB) — Water is essential for human life and environmental as the source of life development on earth. Life is tied so much to water, air and food, while food is tied to water too, but their both shortage are becoming a global issue due to increasing of population and climate change which need new strategies sources of water beside its efficient use together with conservation measures to be an important component of the country’s national water plan.
There are major huge of demanding water resources in South Sudan’s population growth, in industrial development, expansion of irrigated agriculture, massive urbanization and rising standards of living. However, half of the world’s rivers and lakes are seriously polluted of the waterways and surrounding river basins have created millions of environmental refugees. Some of the world’s biggest cities like Beijing, Dhaka, and Mexico City depend heavily on groundwater for their water supply.
In practice, the value of river Nile water is used to estimate water availability and/or deficit in water resources for the country even in the country with large river flows may suffer droughts if there is no proper plan made to tackle in place, unless captured by reservoirs, it flows to the seas, sometimes causing seasonal flooding.
Water needs is difficult to estimate the amount of water essential to maintain a minimum living standard of people partly because this itself requires carefulness of different authorities in using different figures for water consumption both in each sector of the economy in the country. This important aspect is now reviewed in some detail example, you may find a person needs 1 or 2 liters of water a day to live and water is also required for domestic needs. It also depends on the levels of economic development and urbanization.
In fact, the amounts for personal use (drinking, cooking and sanitation) are small compared with other uses. Low levels of water use in several developing countries indicate difficulty in obtaining freshwater because piped water systems are uncommon in rural areas. Often rural people usually women and girls walk several kilometers and spend several hours to bring water for their households and in Africa, for instance, such activity consumes (40 billion) person-hours annually.
This depresses the possibility of economic advancement. So, water use significantly increases with development and urbanization and this can be quantified.
Running water was not available to households except in large cities. In contrast, almost every South Sudanese household today should have excess running water and this water costs very little amount of money. Hence, the UNESCO (2003) report indicates that at present of the world’s population lives in towns and cities by 2030 the proportion will raise to about (60% nearly 5 billion people), with this rapid increase in urbanization, it will be difficult for cities to meet the rising demand for freshwater with agriculture at the same time becoming increasingly dependent on irrigation.
The city of South Sudan suffers continuous water shortages and less than (25%) of the population has nothing to afford to direct access mineral water supply systems own by foreigners. It is not surprising that, in some areas the demand for water already exceeds nature’s supply with a growing number of countries and South Sudan expecting to face water shortages in the near future. Water shortage is becoming the greatest threat to food security, human health and natural ecosystems. There is an urgent need to focus the attention of professionals and policy makers on the problem of groundwater depletion and pollution, particularly in the more arid and semi-arid regions of the world like Asia, Middle East and Africa.
South Sudanese polices makers should introduced some of the method for developing new strategies sources of water supply through the modern traditional approach to construct wells, dams, reservoirs, canals and pumps over the years to collect, control and contain excess flows and to distribute water on demand during different periods to our people. It will help to change the world’s varying water resources into reliable and controlled supplies.
Therefore, that recycling is advantageous not only in providing usable water but also in reducing pollution of existing supplies. Most industrial and domestic processes do not require water of drinking standard. For example, there is no need to for domestic sanitary water to be of the same quality as drinking water. Because of its importance, desalination is reviewed in detail in the next to summaries’ the above arguments, water planners should consider both traditional and modern methods in the design and implementation of their projects.
Reliable access to safe drinking water is a key public health protection issue that is often taken for granted. As we begin to recognize that our water resources are not unlimited and as competing demands for those resources grow, attitudes about how we use our drinking water supplies are being challenged. This year’s drought conditions will further challenge those attitudes and will give water utilities ample opportunity to communicate to customers the value of the commodity you deliver and encourage its wise and thoughtful use.
One more good reason for all water utilities was to promote water use efficiency and educate customers on the true value of drinking water resources. We will be working to assist ourselves in these efforts in the weeks and months ahead. A key message for every resident of our state this year will be drinking Water it’s Worth Saving!
The author can be reached via Linolual69@yahoo.com
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