I used to think installing a drinking water filter was the only thing I needed to do to take care of my water supply at home.
Recently, my attention is on news hype about how the Earth is running out of fresh water.
What are they talking about? The overall amount of water on our planet has remained the same for two billion years.
So there will always be the same amount of water in existence because water, thankfully, has a habit of continuously recycling itself.
Therefore water is not really lost.
It just changes form and goes somewhere else on the planet.
Earth's fresh water supply (3%) will always be around --somewhere.
Unfortunately, fresh water is not plentiful (24 million cubic miles) compared to the amount of water in oceans (315 million cubic miles).
99 % of that 24 million cubic miles is frozen solid in icebergs (mainly in Antarctica), inaccessible in underground aquifers, in the air--and locked inside all living things, too.
Not exactly easy places to get to when you need a glass of water! However, even if the water cycle could re-circulate all the fresh water in existence, world supplies of fresh water would still continue to shrink and become increasingly less reliable.
For example, southern parts of Canada -- blessed with abundant sources of fresh water -- has been losing more than 1.
4 million Olympic-sized swimming pools' worth of fresh water every year from 1971 to 2004.
That's an overall loss of nearly nine per cent (Statistics Canada).
This shrinkage is happening everywhere--regardless of where you live on the planet or whether or not you noticed it in your city or town.
There are a number of reasons why global water supplies are shrinking and becoming more contaminated:

• Population Explosion: By 2050, the United Nations predicts that the world population will likely increase from the current 6.
  868 billion to 9.
  2 billion.
  That's 2.
  33 billion more people who are going to need access to safe water for drinking alone.
  Do the math! If a healthy human body is 70% (35-40 litres) water, there will be trillions of litres of water locked inside all those additional people, making that much less water available than there is today.
  Already one out of six (about 1 billion) people in the world has no secure, safe drinking water.
  The World Health Organization (WHO) calls it "a silent humanitarian crisis" with 3,000 children a day dying from diseases caught from tainted water.
  
• Industrial Growth: As world population grow, so too will agriculture and industries grow to meet consumer demands.
  Fresh water will be displaced for thermal-electric power generation, manufacturing, agriculture (mostly irrigation) and residential use.
  The odds are that in the process water will become more contaminated as well as less plentiful.
  Less water, more concentrated pollutants.
  
• Global Warming: Efforts to deal with global warming will place added strains on water also.
  As local climates change, scientists say water shortages will become more severe in some of the poorest countries.
  Will it lead to mass migrations and international conflict?
• Fresh water is cheap: I know it's hard to imagine that we would ever run out of water when water is everywhere and it's dirt cheap.
  I suppose when something is cheap and easy to get, it's easier to think it will always be that way.
  Not for much longer.
  We've been wasting it and polluting it on a scale that defies reason.
  What economic incentives are there to use water sensibly when it's so cheap? Maybe water should carry a bigger price tag if we want to discourage waste.
  The number of advocates is growing.
  Yvo de Boer, the former UN climate chief who has advocated putting a price on carbon emissions, believes water is inadequately priced.
  At a water conference in Brussels recently he said that countries, companies and individuals should be made more aware of the value of water by raising its cost.
  

Such pressures on our fresh water supplies will continue and there is no magic bullet.
We got here one eco-UNfriendly action at a time; now it's time to reverse the direction.
It helps to get clear about the real issues rather than the hype.
Just being aware of what impacts water supplies is a great place to start because awareness can initiate meaningful change.
It will change how we do things.
And over time, those changes will have an impact; an even bigger impact if you have children to carry on with the work.
And always insure yourself against unexpected emergencies and boiled water advisories.
When you're ready for emergencies, you're really ready! Nothing could be simpler to do when you protect your family with survival tools such as a drinking water filter to keep you safe in a world of uncertainty.