Approximately 1.5 million people in the US lack adequate water and sanitation. For a country with a population of over 310 million this may be considered miniscule. In fact, multinational funding organizations have been known to not even account for them when making calculations and simply round up to 100% the number of individuals in the country with access to water and sanitation. Indeed, most decision makers probably are not aware of such discrepancy in the US between the haves and the have nots. After all, it is the richest nation on the planet and arent sanitation issues a concern only in the developing world. However if we were to approach this dilemma from a human, indeed global perspective and use the total population of Sweden or Greece (instead of the US) as a reference point, wed find that those 1.5 million makeup an astounding 15% of the population in those countries. When using Norway or Ireland as reference points, the figure more than doubles to over 30%. Of course this is an exercise in geo-hypothetics, yet I am sure such numbers can generate concern in political circles which have heretofore been oblivious to the discrepancy. (And for added emphasis, the number of Americans without access to adequate water and sanitation continues to be more than two and a half times the population of Washington DC.) #water #wastewater #infrastructure
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 03:41:06 +0000