The well-known admonition to "use it or lose it" definitely does not apply and is certainly wrong for drinking water. When land animals and plants emerged from the oceans some 400 million years ago, they lost the ability to survive on salt water. Almost all their present terrestrial descendants need fresh water to live on Earth's small 29 percent land surface and even while crossing the vast 71 percent salty oceans. Humans need fresh water for drinking, for crops, for farm animals, and even for industry and commerce. Lake and stream life usually cannot live in salt water. The very existence of most nonmarine life is subject to availability of fresh water. Humans now manage most of the world's limited fresh-water resources to suit ourselves. We even recycle from sea-water or waste-water when compelled to by fresh-water's growing scarcity. Our diets are increasingly turning to tasty, nutritious sea grasses growing in coastal salt water; which frees up fresh water for land-based edible vegetation. We must find other acceptable brackish-water crops such as barley, and breed new mariculture sea grasses that will appeal to more finicky human tastes.

Increased conservation and recycling can save much wasted drinking water in homes, restaurants, industries and commerce; in cities, towns, and suburbs; counties, countries and continents - through both education and regulations with effective penalties. Leaks must be located and repaired. Water-saving aerators should be affixed to all faucets. These and other water-saving devices (including low-flow toilets and showerheads) should be distributed to consumers and even installed free-of-charge. New York City, which formerly wasted a huge amount of water, initiated rebate, monitoring and educational programs in 1994 that reduced water use some 25 percent. Windhoek, a desert city of 230,000 people in southern Africa, has reclaimed residential sewage water to drinking standards for three decades; with industrial wastewater being treated separately to keep metals and synthetic chemicals out of the water supply. Santa Barbara, CA desalinates seawater for its drinking water and Whittier, CA, has recycled residential wastewater safely for decades.

Advanced agricultural technologies exist today that can save half the water used on farms. Trickle irrigation (long done in Israel) uses buried pipes to feed water directly to crop roots instead of wasting it by commonly-done sprinkling or flood irrigation. This prevents harmful mineral accumulation in soils due to evaporation and stops soil erosion from excessive watering. And reshaping farmlands from flat fields to gently-sloping ones would allow excess water to run off the fields and avoid evaporation and erosion problems. Also, soil-moisture measuring devices and computerized operations that dispense water when it is most useful to the growing plants would save enormous quantities of fresh water for more critical uses.

In addition, shipping large amounts of fresh water in gigantic floating bags and tankers from water-rich to water-deficient areas can help. It is already being done in drier climates. Closer to home; cleaned, treated wastewater can be recharged to Long Island aquifers as was done in 1982-84 when it proved to be safe. Lawn-sprinkling, the major waster of drinking water on Long Island could be decreased drastically by using xeriscape lawn-grasses and garden-shrubs. Xeriscape plants need less water. I first learned this in the 1962-66 drought when most of my grasses and plantings died from lack of watering. Those varieties that tolerated the natural environmental drought stress were xeriscape types which I still call "my survivor plants." You too can grow a xeriscape lawn and garden and help save our essential drinking water.

Xeriscape lawns and gardens exist at the Nassau Cooperative Extension in Plainview, and in Great Neck on Bayview Avenue at Old Mill Road, thanks to the fine work by the Great Neck North Water Authority.

PS: "Florida, Low on Drinking Water, Asks EPA to Wave Safety Rule," is a current NY Times front page headline.