My home town Jaipur, Rajasthan is in the western part of India. It is near the Thar Desert and therefore being a desert region, the water supply in the city is still scarce. Most of the households in the area use a water boring system. In this system, a borewell is drilled in the earth’s surface with a pipe that goes down to the groundwater level.The water is then taken from the groundwater as water supply to the household. Due to scarcity of water, the Jaipur Development Authority has made a rule for households bigger than 300 sqm. to install rainwater harvesting structure in their houses, so that groundwater is refilled from the rainwater to some extent. The sewage system in my area takes the used water to Sewage Treatment Plant, Delawas, Jaipur, which uses the Activated Sludge process to clean the water using chlorination and remove bacteria and the microbes, and is then released in nearby farms for agricultural purposes.
I chose Sunday to record my daily usage, as I do most of the water related activities like laundry on that day. According to the USGS, this was my average usage :
Total = 83.7 gallons
Facing the 2 gallon experiment would be a huge task, and I believe even if I cut down very important uses, I would still not be able to accomplish to live on 2 gallons of water in a day. A simple activity like taking a shower consumes 30 gallons of water, that is equivalent to 15 times the water average of a person in Mozambique and Haiti. I would though try to cut down my water use by using less water in brushing and hand/face wash. I would also reduce my shower time by 8 minutes and bring down the water usage in that activity to 14 gallons. I would try to use recyclable dishes so that I can bring down the water usage in dishwashing. Therefore, I would fail the experiment, however the experiment and this study does make me realize to ration my water usage in order to conserve this precious resource. Geography holds an important role in water use, as the geographical factors decide the availability of water in that area, for example in my area the groundwater level is a major geographical factor. Also, I believe we all should learn from this and take steps to conserve water as we can see how lucky we are to live in a place where we don’t see water shortage. This would be a collective action we all can take in order to help reduce water shortages in areas by directing some of the saved water towards those areas, therefore equalizing the water usage and as well as conserving it for future generations.
Hello Akiksha, I really enjoyed reading about the water situation in your hometown of Jaipur. It was really interesting to hear first hand from another student who lives in an area that has to conserve water like that and how different the system is. It really puts it into perspective how much we use in America without thinking about it. I also think the rainwater harvesting structure could be implemented here to help conserve water even in a place like here where it is not much of a problem. It can especially in places like California right now where they are struggling for water supply, and it will also save money.
Here is my post : http://sites.psu.edu/geog30/2016/02/11/module-4-activity-water-tracking-and-usage/
Hi, I’m Yeeren. I thought it was interesting how rainwater harvesting is actually required for sufficiently large houses. I agree that living off 2 gallons is not feasible in our society. However, reducing shower time is a good idea as that is a pretty significant contribution to our water usage. The problem with using recyclable dishes and not washing them is, of course, that we would then be failing to conserve other resources.
My post can be seen here:
http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/02/10/tracking-water-yeeren-low/
Hi Akiksha! I was browsing through people’s posts and yours immediately caught my eye as you wrote about the water system in Jaipur. I have no idea if other countries use the same water system as the U.S. so I was really interested in seeing how yours worked. I was sad to then read that the water supply there is scarce, as that puts into perspective how lucky we are here. Reducing our water consumption definitely reflects a collective action plan as we all use water so we all need to work together in order for it to be sustained.
Here’s the link to my blog: http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/02/10/water-and-its-overconsumption/