Nature's Voice Our Choice

Overhead View of a Natural Waste Water Treatment System Constructed and Operating in Mauritania

Nature's Voice Our Choice strives to preserve, conserve, and restore water resources one community at a time; through the following programs

• Education and public awareness
• Ecologically engineered natural waste water treatment systems
• Rainwater Harvesting
• Empowerment of local populations to become stewards of their water resources
• The Empowerment of Youth through Action

It is our goal to provide information that allows people to make informed decisions about water use, increase awareness of alternatives, and implement balanced community based water resource projects.

Drought, Increased Desertification, and Falling Water Tables Have Led to Mass Migration from Rural Areas into the Cities in Search of Work

 A Growing Problem

In the desert village of Ksar Terchane, in the Northern Adrar Region of Mauritania, West Africa, water is the most valuable resource. Villagers live on less than 2 liters (1/2 gallon)/day including drinking, cooking, bathing, and washing dishes and clothes. Traditionally desert nomads, Mauritanians have become experts in water conservation; not a drop is wasted.
+ When thirsty you drink milk
+ Dishes are washed without soap so that the goats can drink the left over water
+ Bathing is done with a (teapot), permitting a decent bath with only a liter of water.
However in the late 70's drought and increased desertification began to alter their lifestyle, first requiring settlement in oasis villages in order to find water and grow food. Later, as wells dried up, grazing forage for goats ceased to exist, firewood became impossible to find, and as the hot desert winds became relentless, many began to migrate to the cities in search of work.

In the race to develop and produce alternative energies their impact on water resources must not be overlooked.  When searching for an alternative energy source, we expect the alternative to be better than the existing source; better economically and better environmentally.  However, in regions already under water stress, such as the Western United States, bio-fuel production will further decrease the availability of freshwater for development and limit water for ecosystem survival, food and livestock production, and for meeting the basic needs of people in the region.  Current policies in the United States promote and subsidize the production of bio-fuels and many view bio-fuels as an environmentally sustainable alternative source of energy. 

An overview of at the interrelationship between water and bio-fuel production will quickly tell you that this practice is not environmentally sustainable.  Let us look at one feedstock crop ‘corn’ which is widely used to produce ethanol in the United States.  Corn for ethanol production is grown mostly in the Corn Belt and western U.S. 

In Iowa, under partial irrigation, corn production uses about 1081 gallons of water for every gallon of ethanol produced.  In dry regions, such as the southwestern part of Nebraska where corn is fully irrigated, corn production uses over 1500 gallons of water for every gallon of ethanol produced.(1)  Thus, the 13.9 billion gallons of ethanol that was produced in the United States in 2006, required an average of 18 trillion gallons of water. This is more water than the entire US population consumes for domestic use in a year, yet it only replaces 3% of our fuel needs.(2)