Today is world water day 2019 and the tag for this year is #leavenoonebehind. You can join the discussion on twitter with that hashtag.

According to the worldwaterday.org

This World Water Day, 22nd March, is about tackling the water crisis by addressing the reasons why so many people are being left behind.

This article is my humble contribution to the awareness.

Everybody understands the importance of water in our lives; clean water has already been a matter of human concern for thousands of years.
It is a known fact that all major early civilisations regarded an organised water supply as an essential requisite of any sizeable urban settlement.

Amongst the oldest, archaeological evidence on the island of Crete in Greece proves the existence of water transport systems as early as 3500 years ago, while the example of pipes in Anatolia in Turkey points to water supply systems approximately 3000 years old (Mays, 2000).

The remains of probably the most remarkable and well-documented ancient water supply system exist in Rome, Italy. Sextus Julius Frontinus, the water commissioner of ancient Rome in around the first century AD, describes in his documents nine aqueducts with a total length of over 420 km, which conveyed water for distances of up to 90 km to a distribution network of lead pipes ranging in size from 20 to 600 mm. These aqueducts were conveying nearly 1 million m3 of water each day, which despite large losses along their routes would have allowed the 1.2 million inhabitants of ancient Rome to enjoy as much as an estimated 500 litres per person per day (Trevor Hodge, 1992).

Nearly 2000 years later, one would expect that the situation would have improved, bearing in mind the developments of science and technology since the collapse of the Roman Empire. Nevertheless, there are still many regions in the world living under water supply conditions that the ancient Romans would have considered as extremely primitive.

The following are some examples of different water supply standards worldwide:

1 According to a study done in The Netherlands in the late eighties (Baggelaar et al., 1988),

The average frequency of interruptions affecting the consumers is remarkably low; the chance that no water will run after turning on the tap is once in 14 years! Despite such a high level of reliability, plentiful supply and affordable tariffs, the average domestic water consumption in The Netherlands rarely exceeds 130 litres per person per day (VEWIN, 2001).

2. The frequency of interruptions in the water supply system of Sana’a, the capital of the Republic of Yemen, is once in every two days. The consumers there are well aware that their taps may go dry if kept on longer than necessary. Due to the chronic shortage in supply, the water has to be collected by individual tanks stored on the roofs of houses. Nevertheless, the inhabitants of Sana’a can afford on average around 90 litres each day (Haidera, 1995).

3 Interruption of water supply in 111 villages in the Darcy district of the Andhra Pradesh State in India occurs several times a day. Houseconnections do not exist and the water is collected from a central tank that supplies the entire village. Nevertheless, the villagers of the Darcy district are able to fetch and manage their water needs of some
50 litres per person per day (Chiranjivi, 1990).

All three examples, registered in different moments, reflect three different realities:

1. Urban in continental Europe with direct supply,
2. Urban in arid area of the Middle East with intermittent supply but more or less continuous water use, and
3. Rural in Asia where the water often has to be collected from a distance.

Clearly, the differences in the type of supply, water availability at source and overall level of infrastructure all have significant implications for the quantities of water used.

Finally, the story has its end somewhere in Africa, where there is little concern about the frequency of water supply interruptions; the water is fetched in buckets and average quantities are a few litres per head per day, which can be better described as ‘a few litres on head per day’,

as the picture below shows.

Culled from:Introduction to Urban Water Distribution by Nemanja Trifunovic.

lalasticlala, lets educate Nigerians about water.