 |
|
|
 Editorials | Environmental | March 2007 
Water Detectives Hunt Down Waste
 Vivian Song - Toronto Sun
The "water detectives" proudly show off their ID badges, affixed to crisply pressed, button-down shirts.
The school kids walk with purpose, clipboards in hand, patrolling the parched streets of Matamoros, Mexico, looking for locals who are wantonly wasting water. They bust residents hosing down their cars and track down leaky pipes in a bid to preserve their Rio Bravo, which a few years earlier had dried up completely.
Detectives like Carlos Garcia - a 9-year-old whose disarmingly deep, husky voice delivers his lectures like a news anchor - have helped the city reduce water consumption by 18% in one year.
Water Detectives is a documentary that sums up today's World Water Day theme - "Coping With Water Scarcity" - with the tidy simplicity of school children.
According to the UN, water use is growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century. By 2025, it's expected that 3.4 billion people will be living in countries defined as water-scarce.
Canada - boasting the largest source of fresh water in the world - may not be one of them, but that doesn't mean we can blithely ignore the fresh water crisis, said Tim Morris, lawyer for the Sierra Club of Canada.
"Canadians are living in a privileged nation," he said in a panel discussion in Toronto this week. "It's our international duty to help others less fortunate than ourselves."
Populations living around the Great Lakes basin waste more water per capita than anywhere in the world, added Edouardo Sousa of the Council of Canadians.
"We need to be more vigilant in not letting resources to be squandered in industrial uses," he said.
Organizers also called on the government to devise a national water strategy that would ban bulk water exports and prevent the privatization of water.
Morris introduces the audience to another term he says will soon become commonplace - water refugees, displaced in the millions because of drought.
"There's less and less water available to us because we're contaminating it at a greater rate than can be replenished," Sousa said. |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us