There Is No New Water

The Same Water

Name Date
DIRECTIONS: No water is ever made or used up. It just goes around this ring. Follow it, then answer overleaf.
SeaMost of it, most of the time.CloudThe sun lifts it. Salt stays behind.RainFalls on land as fresh water.RiverRuns downhill. Some soaks in.YouBorrowed for a few hours.DrainCleaned, and put back.None of itleaves the ring

Water goes through you, down the drain and out to sea, still water. The water in your glass has been in a cloud, a glacier and a dinosaur.

So What Runs Out?

The Same Water

DIRECTIONS: So why "save water"? Three things run short, and none is the amount.

Clean

Water with nothing harmful in it.

The water that went down your drain is all still there. It is just carrying things now, and taking them back out costs energy and machinery.

Near

Water that is where the people are.

There is an enormous amount of it in the wrong places. Moving it is the expensive part — a pipe, a pump, and a bill.

Now

Water that is here at the moment you need it.

A drought is not a shortage of water on earth. It is rain that arrived somewhere else, or last month, or all at once as a flood.

Clean, near, now.

That is why a country can have a flood and a drought in one year, and why a running tap matters even where it rains: someone spends energy making that water clean and near again.

  1. A tap runs for ten minutes. How much water was lost? Where is it now? Who has to do work because of it?