ds fresh drinking water. The pump was tested and operates at an eight percent proficiency level. It can produce up to 1,000 gallons of drinking water for every four days. Distillation is another method of producing fresh water from sea water. The process involves heating sea water to the point where it changes into steam and then collecting and condensing the steam which contains low or no salts. There have been advances made in this area using solar energy to drive the steam production, but it still has problems. The problems encountered using solar energy is that it requires a vast amount of surface area of the planet to produce any significant amount of fresh water. This type of water purification is useless to urban areas and the use of this process is better left to arid nations that are aligned along ocean frontage. Academic and Research InterviewsAs an addition to the research I collected from various newspapers and Internet sites, I also wrote Dr. Altaf Memon, the director of the environmental management curriculum at UMUC and Mr. Ravi Damera, who is a practicing environmental engineer. I sent identical letters to each and received letters from them that were uniquely the opinion of the respondent. After I introduced myself, I ask them to respond to this question, Based on the exponential growth of the world population, I feel that it will be hard to maintain adequate fresh water supplies to a population of over 9.1 billion people. If it is possible, can you please give me your opinion, as too what impact almost doubling the current population will have in the future? Mr. Ravi Damera, who replied to my question on Mar 10, 2000, not only agreed with my assumption, that it will be hard to maintain adequate fresh water supplies to a population of over 9.1 billion people, also provided me with a list on reasons why this was occurring. Mr. Ravi Damera reply is as follows, Richard, I agree with you. There is already water shortag...
