For our Year 7 ‘Project Utopia’ project, we were asked to design a perfect world/city. The reason as to why we are studying the Water Cycle in Science, is because water plays an important role in our daily lives. Water is used for a variety of purposes, including a cup of water to go along with your breakfast, washing the dishes, or even flushing the toilet. These daily duties would be impossible to complete without water, which is why it is such a valuable resource that we must safeguard. It also holds a responsibility of the lives of all living organisms, which is what truly makes water so special.

Although water is such an important resource for humans, we have still made many heavy impacts that have disturbed the Water cycle:

1. Deforestation

Deforestation can be caused by agricultural or too much wood extraction from the same forested area. When an area has been deforested, it won’t store any water, there will be surface runoff which will send sediments to nearby rivers, and potentially killing all of the fish that have inhabited that area.

2. Urbanization

Urbanization is when a city becomes more and more populated. However, when a population increases, so tends the pollution, meaning that lots of polluted runoff end up in the ocean and even reefs.

3. Agriculture

Agriculture is something such as farming or raising livestock. Currently, producing beef utilizes the most amounts of water needed.  Pesticides, fertilizers and animal waste tend to pollute nearby water and due to the land that agriculture takes up, nearby rivers will carry less water which is more polluted.

Greywater

Greywater refers to any domestic wastewater that is not sewage. Due to  its organic content, sewage is not considered as greywater, when compared to greywater, sewage has a much larger organic loading. Once greywater has been through proper treatment, it can be of use as water for laundry or toilet flushing, as well as irrigation of plants. Treated greywater is a perfect food source for plants, since it includes lots of nutrition such as phosphorus and nitrogen. Recycling Greywater can help us decrease the usage of water in our daily lives and save us from wasting tons of water.  In my design of Project Utopia, I will ensure to co-operate this design into my city to ensure that water is used wisely and not wasted, as well as keep the sustainable factors of my city up.