Why is there a water shortage?

Question

When most of the world is covered in water, all you have to do is filter it!!!!

Answer 1

There is no shortage of drinking water in the US. If there were people dying from no water it would be plastered all over the news, and there isn’t. Its just the liberals way to justify increasing the costs of drinking water.

Answer 2

There is a shortage of clean drinking water, not water in general.  You are wrong about the easy of making water pure.  You can filter toxic water but you will still have the toxic elements in it.

Industries like manufacturing plants make products and they need water for different parts of the process, the water gets contaminated with various things and this water, when they are done with it, gets dumped into a lake or a river, contaminating the water in the lake or river.  Yes, there is a lot of water on the planet, but a lot of that water is salt water and it is very expensive and difficult to take out the salt to make it safe to drink.  

Answer 3

Wow. How naive. We don't have filters strong enough to take out many of the chemicals that have been added to our water. Removing salt from sea water is expensive and time consuming. Think about the midwest  united states. Most of it is supported by one large aquifer (underground water source), which is being emptied much faster then it is being filled. What happens when that runs out? The average adult uses about 30 gallons of water per day. Are you suggesting we should ship all of that water from areas that have plenty? After the cost of purifying it and shipping it, a gallon of water would cost more then a gallon of gas. Can you imagine paying 120$ a day just for water? Another option is to purify sewage, but that has its problems as well. Would you drink it? I'm willing to say that most Americans would not. On top of the 'ick' factor, we don't have filters strong enough to remove trace amounts of medication in sewage. Antidepressants, painkillers and ADD medication have all been found in 'purified' water. Lovely, isn't it?

Answer 4

Salt and distribution are the biggest problems and filter take out so much than they have to be replaced.

Answer 5

The thing is, because of the rising population on Earth, more water is being drunk. We only have a certain amount of water on earth and we can't waste it. We are drinking too much of this water to keep us healthy. BUT. Global warming! It is causing SO much damage to the earth! Water is rising as the polar ice-caps are melting. This will give us water. Too much water. There is so much is in polar ice-caps that when it melts it will rise the sea levels making it too hard too live! That is another reason that we need to keep our earth clean and use less energy. Water is an important thing. We can't live without it. BUT the sun is also evaporating it! Causing us to lose the water. Another way to save water is by keeping it. When it rains collect the water then put it in a filter to make it healthy! Good luck!

Answer 6

the problem is that making "fresh" water from the mass quantity of water found on earths surface through reverse osmosis (RO) is hugely expensive and extremely slow. some island nations and coastal areas have to use this in order to stay alive. the discovery channel probably showed you a version of an RO that is huge with acres and acres of RO membranes. The cost on something like this could be in the billions, and the return would be 1/4 of the water of a typical water treatment facility. Like most things, dont believe everything you see on TV.