Water Conservation

Water conservation includes all the policies, strategies and activities made to sustainably manage the natural resource fresh water, to protect the water environment, and to meet current and future human demand.

Fresh water is naturally occurring water on Earth's surface in ice sheets, ice caps, glaciers, icebergs, bogs, ponds, lakes, rivers and streams, and underground as groundwater in aquifers and underground streams.

In ecology, sustainability is the property of biological systems to remain diverse and productive indefinitely.

In economics, demand is the utility for a goods or service of an economic agent, relative to his/her income.

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Population, household size, and growth and affluence all affect how much water is used.

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Factors such as climate change have increased pressures on natural water resources especially in manufacturing and agricultural irrigation.

Manufacturing is the value added production of merchandise for use or sale using labour and machines, tools, chemical and biological processing, or formulation.

Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns when that change lasts for an extended period of time.

Irrigation is the method in which a controlled amount of water is supplied to plants at regular intervals for agriculture.

Many US cities have already implemented policies aimed at water conservation, with much success.

The goals of water conservation efforts include:

Ensuring availability of water for future generations where the withdrawal of freshwater from an ecosystem does not exceed its natural replacement rate.

An ecosystem is a community of living organisms in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment, interacting as a system.

Energy conservation as water pumping, delivery and wastewater treatment facilities consume a significant amount of energy.

Wastewater treatment is a process used to convert wastewater - which is water no longer needed or suitable for its most recent use - into an effluent that can be either returned to the water cycle with minimal environmental issues or reused.

Energy conservation refers to the reducing of energy consumption through using less of an energy service.

In some regions of the world over 15% of total electricity consumption is devoted to water management.

Water resource management is the activity of planning, developing, distributing and managing the optimum use of water resources.

Habitat conservation where minimizing human water use helps to preserve freshwater habitats for local wildlife and migrating waterfowl, but also water quality.

Habitat conservation is a management practice that seeks to conserve, protect and restore habitat areas for wild plants and animals, especially conservation reliant species, and prevent their extinction, fragmentation or reduction in range.

Waterfowl are certain wildfowl of the order Anseriformes, especially members of the family Anatidae, which includes ducks, geese, and swans.

Water quality refers to the chemical, physical, biological, and radiological characteristics of water.