Conserve water, our liquid asset

Here is a letter from Debra Shore that was printed in the Chicago Sun Times

Since today is World Water Day, let's conduct a thought experiment: Imagine a day without water. Brush your teeth in the morning with toothpaste and saliva. (No rinsing!). No shower, no bath, no washing your face. No flushing the toilet. No coffee or tea. No pop, no milk, no juice (the major ingredient in all these? Water). No chats by the water cooler. No shampoo at the gym. No rocks for the Scotch, no dip in the pool. You get my drift? Our dependence on water links us -- happily, mysteriously -- with much of the rest of creation. The very fiber of our being is, in fact, liquid: We humans are approximately 70 percent water. And while we can live for a month or so without food, we can survive a mere five to seven days without water. So why are we so cavalier about the single element upon which our lives utterly depend? I had a friend who lived for a time in Santa Fe. She kept a bucket in the shower and captured the water as she waited for it to warm up enough to shower, then used this to water her garden. A perfectly reasonable practice -- and one that seems entirely foreign to most of us. We who live near one of the world's great lakes are truly fortunate. Most of us have access to ample fresh water. But this may not always be the case. Even in our region, some communities dependent on groundwater are experiencing localized water shortages. And in fast-developing areas on the fringes of the metropolis, the problems of water supply will only grow. As a recent article in the New Yorker stated, ''If a large bucket were to represent all the seawater on the planet, and a coffee cup the amount of freshwater frozen in glaciers, only a teaspoon would remain for us to drink.'' Yet we who live near the Great Lakes are still the lucky ones. With efforts to conserve, we can enhance our supply and meet future needs. Chicago is poised to have a robust economy for the rest of this century due to its access to freshwater and transportation infrastructure. But the rest of the world will be watching. Will we in the Chicago region be responsible stewards of this irreplaceable resource, or will we be wasteful?

Debra Shore, commissioner,

Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago