Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Here is a link to notes from the keynote speaker at the Australian Water Summit by Maude Barlow, Senior advisor on water to the president of the United nations general assembly
http://www.naturalsequencefarming.com/f ... .php?t=554

In my opinion this is a far more pressing danger than global warming here is a quote from the page


And we don't have much time.


I remember watching a documentary a few years ago about the sudden disappearance of the Aztec civilization, they concluded that it was caused by drought.

If we could only harvest the polar ice melt that threatens sea level rise due to global warming...

We could perhaps solve two problems at once...

Then again the ice melt will (IMO) cool the ocean temps... and perhaps provide increased rainfall as nature tries to correct the imbalance anyway...

I've already hear it said that the 3rd world war won't be over oil or anything like that, it will be over water.

Hmm... same here TCL.
cool clean water

and food..

Food, water, oil, overconsumption is the problem. Doubt it will be solved as every nation wants to get one up on the other. It's sure seems like water should be easy to solve, can't geneticly modify it. and most polutants and organisms can be filtered or treated out without any new expensive technology.

water AND sanitation. Water is useless if you can't drink it due to contamination.

There is a company that makes an electrolyzer cell to clean black water for drinking. Water can always be made drinkable with some energy input. It might even be possible to program water for better health (messages from water).

details ddm?
2.6 billion people would like to hear more about it.

My! The forum has grown since last I checked

If we would stop pooping in our drinking water and flushing it away we would have plenty of water. Personally I use waterless toilet and compost the result. I capture roof run off for the garden and send AP drains to orchard or garden. I recycle grey water to bamboo and fruit trees.
I live in the Mojave desert and pump from a deep well. All of the above measures could be applied to the developed world but the third world is another story.

This problem is huge because half the planets population is apparently dirt floor poor and uneducated. But a miracle solution isn't what’s needed. Just some basic blocking and tackling of the problem which is mainly sanitation and hygiene. Like spirit rancho said “stop pooping in the drinking water”. They need to dig latrines, and wash hands afterwards. More than a third of the deaths are attributed to this, worms. Some years ago UNICEF installed water wells in Bangladesh and most were tainted with arsenic. Whole villages began getting sick and getting cancer and other ailments. They began testing and had to go back and mark the tainted wells. Well the villagers didn't want to drink from scum ponds if a clean water well was nearby so they continued to use them. Then UNICEF drilled deeper wells into deeper aquifers and many times found good water. Heavy metals for the most part cannot be filtered out. but as DDM said the electrolizer will plate out the heavy metals. But at a high power cost. They just need clean wells with the filters described below. Latrines and education. And to achieve those goals they need funding. It’s a worthy cause.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXR4Z_NBD-E&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXR4Z_NBD-E&NR=1
http://www.unicef.org/wes/index_43106.html
http://www.unicef.org/wes/index_watersecurity.html

id disagree and say the better part of the problem is the part of the world population that is rich and uneducated

People like to say we should teach africans to dig latrines and wells
bad i dea i say
latrine...well? see the problem
better we go for composting toilets and rainwater tanks / cisterns

but really the problem is all the rich ignorant aussies
who waste more per capita than any other people on the planet
who think they have the right to continue flushing their toilets
more than that - most people consider it a shock or abhorrent to compost their own poo
because theyve grown up at least 2 full generations not knowing anything else

most aussies are scared of their own shit. itd be a laugh if it wasnt such a tragedy

im not too radical. im happy to go bury the compost under so it cycles nutrients broadly rather than directly. i think thats perfectly reasonable.

if you want to know more and are prepared to be re-educated in just what poo is, and what happens to it in an aerobic compost pile..

download the free 'Humanure handbook', watch the videos, etc

http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/humanure.html

LOL, yep Africans and Americans poop in their drinking water. Sanitary nations just flush their poo drinking water mix. We all need to compost our poo.

All toilets is urban environments should be connected to a sewer.

Its not your fault the governments are too daft to recycle it properly. It can be done and very simply.
In Victoria they are building a massive desal plant for no good reason other than stupid politics. Currum and Wrribee treatment plants continue to dump 12 gl a month into the oceans. If Currum were diverted to gippsland and cleaned naturally they would not need to dam the Mitchell river. 6gl a month is plenty. Werribee is the same, if it were diverted over the hill to the wimmera then they would have an extra 6gl to play with.

Now if every city and every town did the same, treated the water correctly before disposal then its good clean water and it has value. But hey, I don't work in the public service where dummies cannot figure out the value of 12gl of water but spend billions making pipes to get rid of it.

To see the volume of Currum go to Rosebud near the freeway at the end, there are portals that view directly at the main discharge pipe before it reaches Gunnamatta. Its 4 times the volume of the Yarra River at the mouth. It would take 6 min to get from Authurs seat to Gunnamatta if you jumped in.