Water 3052
Human societies cannot be sustained where there is
insufficient water. In the age of plentiful water flowing freely in rivers and
streams, people built their cities, farms and homes where the water was.
Riverside towns and cities had plenty of water for every conceivable use. Farms
were possible where the wells were not too deep and the water was clean.
The problem with an "inexhaustible resource" is
that it is not truly inexhaustible and when it is thought about in those terms
it becomes wasted and polluted with everyone's effluent. Cities and factories are situated on the basis of
the availability of the essential resources present at the time. Los Angeles grew up using its local water
availability until it grew too big. Now there
are aqueducts, pumping stations and massive water-rights arguments extending
into Colorado as to who gets the Colorado River water.
Throughout most of human history human waste disposal has been
a matter of habit and convenience. People relieved themselves wherever they
could. It might be in the woods, along a stream, while sitting on a fallen
tree. Where populations grew more dense organized places of disposal were
developed as were places on rural homesteads where farmers and livestock
raisers knew of the necessity of proper handling of wastes and keeping it a
respectable distance from the house.
The hole in the ground and privy shed became the accepted
method of waste disposal. It was not so much disposal as it was storage while
it turned into compost and was covered up and a new location selected. Even in
urban places the outhouse was a fixture for many decades before the
installation of water transport sewage systems. The relatively small populations
and the readily available water and river outflow made that paradigm viable for
a while.
Soon the raw effluent levels rose to the point where the
next downstream town could not draw water for their domestic purposes without
getting the pathogens and biologic materials in their municipal water systems.
Something had to be done to minimize the sewage levels in the shared river
water resource. That is when communities started building sewage treatment
plant along the rivers and lakes where the sewage used to be allowed to flow
freely into the water. We did not do that voluntarily. It required Federal and
state laws enacted to force communities to charge themselves the costs of
treating the wastewater before returning it to the shared waterway.
In those latter years of the 19th Century the water source
was not so much limited and we could dump as much water down our drains as we
pleased. Throughout most of the 20th Century water was liberally used to flush
toilets, water lawns, wash cars and generally consume. Even as early as the
beginning of the 21st Century battles over water rights sprung up in areas
where the rain did not fall in sufficient quantity, Snow pack did not freeze in
the mountains enough to keep the rivers flowing all summer. Long distance water
transport systems were open troughs subject to high levels of evaporation. We
build pipelines to transport gas and oil across the continent while ignoring
the need for a better more balanced water distribution system.
In order to make it possible for the much larger populations
to exist, the planners up through 3052 had to abandon the water transport of
human wastes entirely. Aquifers needed to be highly protected from intentional
and neglectful contamination.
Water disposal of any type of wastes needed to be completely
prohibited because even though each polluter argued that his wastes did little
or no discernible damage, all the polluters collectively did massive damage.
Therefore the human waste handling systems that exist in
3052 are completely dry transport. With the growing problem of chemical waste
disposal, dwelling of the distant future will condense fresh water out of the
humid air. Water for consumption and water for other purposes will be sourced
by different means. The massively greater land coverage by structures will
reduce the permeable area and afford communities to rooftop capture rain so
that it does not contribute to greater flooding. Groundwater recharge from
clean sources will help keep the supply of fresh water available at its maximum
extent.
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