Water Management
The continued presence of many old water pumps in our towns, villages, and countryside helps me remember that having tap water piped to us is a very recent innovation. How water is managed today can be as hard to know about as the workings inside mobile phones. To include wisdom about water in our culture (alongside an understanding of the telecommunications that flow through our airwaves) is a natural response, the consequence of a childlike curiosity, but I like to think it is also a growing sign of a nation's shared maturity.
Without family and friends who take the lead by installing visible water management technology, or by practicing good water management in their own homes, or who enjoy spending every spare holiday and weekend visiting industrial infrastructure and science parks (such as the one at the Herstmonceux Observatory in East Sussex), learning about water and and how it reaches us may depend more upon books and the internet.
Having a pressing motive to learn about water does help. At one time I was asked to carry out some research into whether the water industry had any oil-dependency. I learned that, short of needing to fuel water company vehicles (which may now be electric) the answer was simply that “oil and water don’t mix”, so they avoid it. In order to move water, the water companies use gravity wherever possible; not fuelled-combustion-generator pumps. An interest in learning about water infrastructure can also be nurtured through studying Architecture, Town Planning, and Horticulture. Fluid Mechanics Engineering is one of the most relevant academic departments that study the subject, but at the end of the course the employers interested in your expertise might ask you to go down drains and sort out their sewage works. So, developing a comprehensive understanding to pass on to the next generation can be a challenge.
Many children have read Vera Southgate’s Ladybird Book about The Magic Porridge Pot, or have recited the older Nursery Rhyme about Old Mother Hubbard’s bare cupboard, and both of these stories have helped young minds to understand that the things we depend upon aren’t all easy to come by. Water, like food, is similarly a limited resource that we depend upon others to provide us with and it can't be taken for granted. So I’ve written a short story which can be accessed here with the aim of helping children to think about the water supply that we depend upon today.
Our homes are places where we need to be safe, but it can be hard to feel safely water-secure at home whilst bringing to mind the origins of our tap water, and the routes it passes through before it reaches our taps. Our current industrial processes are imperfect. Building-up a culture of good water management in the home can help. Even an occasional visit to grandparents (who find themselves with spare time and resources in their retirement to carry through the projects that they couldn’t when they were busy working and raising their own children) can leave a lasting impression that sets a pattern for good practise in successive generations.
When I was a child I could run around in the spray of lawn-sprinklers, play all day in paddling pools that were repeatedly emptied out due to energetic antics then filled-up again, I could swim with family and friends in a choice of private and public swimming pools, and develop a variety of skills in hosepipe-use through instruction combined with unhurried observation, trial and error. Grown-ups smiled because it looked like a taste of heaven that might only have been dreamed about when they were young. These days, hosepipe and sprinkler bans are the norm, and the ownership of paddling and leisure pools is recognised as increasingly anti-social. We’ve learned as a community to be more careful but our underground infrastructure of feed-pipes and drains are inadequate, broken, and in need of replacement. Water storage tanks begin to look more pleasing in our gardens than leisure pools and fountains. Water capture specialists are finding more work than those involved in mopping-up, unblocking gutters and clearing drains.
Water is a substance with unique qualities that still baffles our scientists. It is also essential for life to exist. Whilst is is used as a best Standard for measuring other fluids and PH values, it is neither an unchanging nor neutral thing. It is something very special that we all need to learn about and appreciate more.
Felicity Newman, Father's Day (18-06-2023)