Fortunately, a lack of clean water has not been a problem for Belgium and the Netherlands. You turn on the tap and before you know it, plenty of clean drinking water flows out. It seems as if our water supplies are inexhaustible. Despite a relative abundance, analysts still predict an impending water scarcity if increasing pollution does not change.
Water
- History
- Hygiene
- Water companies
- Drinking water
- Pump up groundwater
- Water is getting dirty
History
About 5000 years BC, our ancestors discovered water in the ground by digging wells. Egyptians collected the water in wells sometimes more than a hundred meters deep. The groundwater was collected with buckets and leather bags. Water pipes were then laid by digging trenches in the sand and chiseling ditches out of rocks.
Hollow trees were used to divert the water. In the Roman Empire, the basis for our current supply system was subsequently formed. 14 aqueducts transported the water to Rome. There it was divided over different districts. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the aqueducts were not used for a long time, so that the technical information was unfortunately lost. The people had to resupply with well water.
Hygiene
For centuries rivers, ponds and wells were the drinking water for humans. Due to the enormous population increase in recent decades, the quality of the water has deteriorated noticeably. Epidemics often caused drinking water to be contaminated, so that a private well was often safer than communal wells.
Between 1650 and 1750, all wells were covered and fitted with hand pumps to counteract the increasing pollution. Many people in rural areas still use their own well water and things often go wrong there.
The owners of a drinking water well would do well to have the water examined for its purity at least once a year. This can be done through municipal authorities. This control is very important, as there are very few well waters that meet the drinking water standards.
Water companies
It was found that there was a great lack of comfort, hygiene and an increasing need for clean drinking water. Thus water distribution became a necessity. In order to meet the growing demand for drinking water, wooden pipes were laid in 1675, and later in 1687 a lead network, which provided water to public and private fountains. In 1877 this network was adapted to the requirements of a more contemporary water supply system. Public networks only began to emerge from the 17th century.
Drinking water
We rely on two sources for the extraction of our drinking water: groundwater and surface water. Groundwater, sometimes confused with surface water, is simply water that is underground. The water is available there, because precipitation seeps through various soil layers, as well as due to the infiltration of rivers and lakes. During its stay in the subsurface, the water absorbs some elements that will determine the quality of the groundwater. When the soil is sufficiently soaked, all the excess water will be drained. Partly through the surface, it will flow to streams, canals, canals, rivers, lakes and eventually to the sea. That is surface water.
Pump up groundwater
Water companies ensure that the water is already clean when you turn on your tap for consumption. In many areas, surface water has become so scarce that people have switched to groundwater. Surface water is also less pure and has to undergo a lot more treatments compared to groundwater.
Groundwater is mainly pumped from sand layers, gravel layers and the base. The thicker the sandy layers, the more groundwater can be extracted. It cannot be pumped up from clay layers or other impermeable layers. The plinth is not a sand layer, but a rock with cracks in certain places. Groundwater can only be pumped from these gaps.
Water is getting dirty
Discharging more and more waste into the water makes it more difficult to remove this waste and puts the eternal water cycle under heavy pressure. The self-cleaning character of nature often fails due to overload. We are gradually destroying the primal source of all life on Earth. We find groundwater four kilometers below the earth’s crust. If these underground lakes are polluted, it will be a major disaster and irreversible. The earth is clearly signaling that it cannot continue like this!