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Water Supply And Consumption
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Water is
one of the world's most valuable resources. It is a basic necessity of
life for both plants and animals. Mankind cannot, in fact, survive
without water as even the human body is made up of about 70% water.Water
resources are becoming increasingly scarce in many parts of the world
due to development, increased demand, climate change and resulting
drought and explosive population growth. The availability of a reliable
and clean supply of water is one of the most important determinants of
our health. WHO explains that diseases related to drinking-water
contamination represent a major burden on human health and the
interventions to improve the quality of drinking-water provide
significant benefits to health.
Water is the only substance that
exists naturally on Earth in all three physical states of matter, gas,
liquid, and solid, and it is always on the move among them. The Earth
has oceans of liquid water and Polar Regions covered by solid water.
Energy from the sun is absorbed by liquid water in oceans, lakes, and
rivers and gains enough energy for some of it to evaporate and enter the
atmosphere as an invisible gas, water vapour. As the water vapour rises
in the atmosphere it cools and condenses into tiny liquid droplets that
scatter light and become visible as clouds. Under the proper
conditions, these droplets further combine and become heavy enough to
precipitate (fall out) as drops of liquid or, or if the air is cold
enough, flakes of solid, thus returning to the surface of the Earth to
continue this cycle of water between its condensed and vapour phases..
The
hydrologic cycle is a conceptual model that describes the storage and
movement of water between the biosphere, athmosphere, lithosphere, and
the hydrosphere. Water on our planet can be stored in any one of the
following major reservoirs: atmosphere, oceans, lakes, rivers, soils,
glaciers, snowfields, and groundwater. Water moves from one reservoir to
another by way of processes like evaporation, condensation,
precipitation, deposition, runoff, infiltration, sublimation,
transpiration, melting and groundwater flow. The oceans supply most of
the evaporated water found in the atmosphere. Of this evaporated water,
only 91% of it is returned to the oceans basins by way of precipitation.
The remaining 9% is transported to areas over landmasses where
climatological factors induce the formation of precipitation. The
resulting imbalance between rates of evaporation and precipitation over
land and ocean is corrected by runoff and groundwater flow to the
oceans.
Water resources are becoming increasingly scarce in many
parts of the world due to development, increased demand, climate change
and resulting drought and explosive population growth. The availability
of a reliable and clean supply of water is one of the most important
determinants of our health. Thus, water use (demand) is a function of
availability (supply).
Water use falls into several major classes,
each of which is associated with certain quantity and quality
requirements. These classes include water for drinking and cooking,
waste disposal, crop production, aquaculture, livestock, industrial use,
recreational use, navigational use, and ecological values such as
survival of natural lake, riverine or wetland communities. The quantity
of water used within each of these classes is influenced mainly by
variables such as climate and precipitation. The proportion of total
water used for any specific purpose is controlled by socioeconomic
conditions, tradition, culture and water availability. Agriculture based
economies, such as Nigeria's, shall require up to 80% of available
water for agriculture, and 10% each for industrial and domestic
purposes.
In an urban setting, the water used to generate electricity
may be used for irrigation down a river. The same water might be used
yet again as it is withdrawn for a public water supply or an industry.
Only a few uses actually consume water. Irrigated agriculture, for
example, consumes 55% of the water it uses. The consumptive nature of
irrigation, therefore, limits many simultaneous users of the same
resource. Municipal facilities such as cities consume 21% of water they
withdraw. In contrast, industry which withdraws very large quantities of
water, consumes only about 3% of that water. Although the quality of
water returned to the system may change. Unless unacceptable changes in
quality occur, many industrial users could benefit from the same water
resource. The human needs about 2-10 litres of water per day for normal
physiological functions, depending on climate and workload. About 1
litre of water is provided by daily food consumption. The total water
consumption per capita per day is determined by a number of factors,
such as availability, quality, cost, income, size of family, cultural
habits, standard of living, ways and means of water distribution and
climate (World Bank Water Research Team, 1993).
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]This study examines the domestic water supply and consumption in Ibadan north east local government area of Oyo state, Nigeria. Primary and Secondary data were used during the study. Primary data were gathered through the use of administered questionnaires. Structured questionnaire was used to solicit information from two hundred and forty (240) randomly selected households. This questionnaire was used to obtain information on type of water source, distance from household and water consumption p ... Continue reading---
