Sustainable Wastewater and Water Management

Water is a building block of all life on Earth, so sustainable water management plays a large role in climate change reduction efforts. This guide explains the importance of smart water management and solutions available for water resources management.

Water management is the planning and distribution of available water resources to homes and businesses. A water management system can encompass a single municipality, a division of it, or broader regions covering multiple cities, agricultural areas, and wilderness zones. 

Water management systems ensure people have the water they need for drinking, bathing, cooking, washing, and watering plants, while meeting businesses’ water needs for industrial processes, landscaping, and agriculture. This alone means juggling finite resources and competing interests, and that’s before getting into environmental considerations. 

Wastewater management, however, concerns water sent to sewers, both from homes and businesses and from storm runoff. Areas can have separate or combined sewage and storm runoff systems, though combined one’s risk sewage overflowing into surface water during storm surges. 

Wastewater management systems must manage sewage challenges like odours, noxious gases, clogs, chemicals for treating sewage, and directing sewage. City planners in turn need to build neighbourhoods to absorb and handle surges of rainwater through measures like road slopes, landscape grading, and storm ponds. 

Wastewater management plans increasingly also need to make use of this expelled water. This has challenges, but solutions are emerging out of necessity. 

Sustainable water management seeks the big picture of water and wastewater management. It aims to ensure both present and future generations will have the water they need, that people’s water needs will be met worldwide, and that the environment can sustain itself. This is no small task. 

All life on Earth needs water to survive, and we consume it for most of the comforts of our lives. Freshwater resources are limited and increasingly struggling to replenish what we draw from them. Thus, finding and implementing sustainable water management solutions is essential. 

Sustainable water management factors heavily into planning water treatment facilities and delivery infrastructure: Large, expensive projects that have many stakeholders and must project future population growth. 

Without access to clean freshwater, people face water stress and water scarcity: dehydration, poor sanitation, and disease. This has been a very real thing for much of the world for generations, so water management has plenty of challenges in the present and for the future. 

Water covers a majority of the planet, but 97%+ of it is saltwater. The freshwater remainder is in the following sources: 

• Groundwater: Aquifers in underground rock formations, which continuously replenish from the water cycle. Drawing groundwater (using wells) excessively depletes them long-term.
• Glaciers: Found in polar regions and mountains, they feed our rivers but are increasingly facing permanent melting.
• Permafrost: This normally frozen soil in polar regions is similarly thawing, which releases carbon emissions and affects local ecosystems.
• Lakes, rivers, swamps: Freshwater sources found above ground, and which need careful management to avoid pollution.
• Atmosphere: Clouds, which exchange water between all these sources.

Only some of these sources are practically accessible, but a warming planet and water overuse are making these other water reserves pick up the slack, which is unsustainable. 

As we can see, water management is a multifaceted challenge, with many parties and conditions to satisfy.

As described above, freshwater sources are few, finite, and diminishing. Aquifers are depleting, glaciers are melting, and lakes and rivers are lowering, all while oceans rise. Sustainable water resources management will take careful cooperation and more conservative water use to get our demands in line with what sources can supply.

Industry consumes more water than individuals, though it does so to bring us the food and products our lives depend on. The largest industrial water consumers are:

• Agriculture: The plants and animals that feed us need water to grow, just like we do. Many of our most-consumed foods, such as wheat and rice, have greater water needs than others. Agricultural water use efficiency will be vital in the coming years, as will adopting less water-consuming foods—which in turn will improve biodiversity and make us less reliant on a few select plants.
• Utilities: Along with energy sources, generating electricity consumes great amounts of water. Facilities using oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear all need cooling, often through water. This also releases heat to water sources, affecting the ecosystem. Hydroelectric dams affect water sources by increasing temperature and sediment and altering the flows wildlife need.
• Textiles: Mass-produced clothing items each take enormous quantities of water to produce, particularly in fabric dyeing. This industry will need to assess its supply chain and practices to improve its industrial water management.
• Automotive: Building cars uses water for metal finishing, painting, and tyres.

All this industrially consumed water has to go somewhere. Industrial wastewater management has long been a challenge and evokes past polluting examples of communities and ecosystems suffering long-term health damage. Wastewater pollution mitigation needs to factor into sustainable wastewater management plans.

It’s easy to call for more sustainable water use, but that doesn’t change our water needs. The United Nations recognises water supply as a human right. Everyone deserves clean, safe, affordable water for drinking, sanitation, cooking, and cleaning. Bringing food, clothing, heat, and electricity to us takes water too. Water reduction should be encouraged, but water’s use can’t be eliminated.

Smart water management can begin with you, your home, and your business. Strive for these practices in water use efficiency:

• Take shorter and more efficient showers, and only when necessary.
• Collect rainwater for your garden’s needs and invest in greywater irrigation.
• Landscape and garden with plants with low water needs and minimal turf grass.
• Fix leaks and install efficient water fixtures.
• Invest in efficient dishwashers and washing machines and run fewer and fuller loads.
• Reduce food and clothing waste.
• Wash cars and home exteriors sparingly.

These measures help you do your part for sustainable water management.

Along with water monitoring and control, RS can equip you with pump strainers and filters to maintain your water quality.