Have you ever wondered what happens to rainwater after it falls from the sky? Its journey is fascinating and crucial to our planet’s hydrological cycle. In this article, we will explore the journey of rain into the river network and how this process is fundamental to the uptake of water, ensuring the supply of this vital resource.

The Rain Cycle: From Clouds to Earth

Rain begins its journey when water droplets form in clouds. These droplets coalesce and grow to a size large enough to fall to earth. As they fall, gravity guides them towards their final destination: the earth’s surface.

 La Escorrentía: El Camino de la Lluvia hacia la Red Fluvial

Once rainfall reaches the land surface, it begins its journey into the river network through runoff. Runoff is the process in which rainwater flows over land, finding its way into streams, rivers and finally, into the sea or other bodies of water.

The Importance of Runoff for Water Harvesting

Runoff plays an essential role in water catchment. During its journey, rainwater infiltrates into the ground, recharging underground aquifers, and flows into surface water bodies, forming the river network. This water is vital for maintaining the balance of aquatic ecosystems and ensuring the supply of drinking water for communities and agriculture.

Rainwater Harvesting: Harnessing this Vital Resource

Rainwater harvesting is a practice of collecting and storing water from runoff for later use. Through catchment systems, such as roofs and gutters, it is possible to collect rainwater and direct it to suitable tanks.

Benefits of Rainwater Harvesting

Rainwater harvesting offers numerous benefits. Firstly, it reduces reliance on conventional water sources, such as aquifers and municipal supplies, by tapping into an available natural resource. It also promotes sustainability by reducing the demand for treated water and minimising the environmental impact associated with its abstraction and distribution.

Responsible Care and Use of Rainwater

It is important to use harvested rainwater responsibly and consciously. The installation of adequate filtration and purification systems ensures the quality of the water for drinking or irrigation purposes. It is also essential to consider local legislation and health and safety regulations when implementing rainwater harvesting systems.

Rainwater harvesting in the Rain ofLife solar kit

Rain of Life has specific solar kits for atmospheric water generators that are equipped with solar panels that capture the sun’s energy to power the equipment. But they also allow rainwater that falls on them to be collected. This water is channelled to a tank where it is stored in optimal conditions until the generator uses it for drinking water purification.

The use of solar energy in combination with rainwater harvesting minimises energy consumption and increases daily water availability. For example, the solar kit for the RoL50 generator consists of a metal structure with 4 state-of-the-art solar panels, storage batteries, a power inverter to connect the machine and a 1,000-litre tank equipped with elements that keep the water in optimal conditions until it is consumed.

The solar kit for the RoL1,000 generator follows the same philosophy, but with a much higher energy capacity. This kit has 80 solar panels mounted on a metal structure supported by two 20-foot shipping containers. These containers, once covered with decorative aluminium panels, create an enclosed, protected and habitable space of 160 m2 that can be used for a variety of functions. In addition, this kit can incorporate water dispensers with RFID technology for precise control of the quantities supplied. At Rain ofLife, we are committed to energy efficiency and maximising the use of rainwater. Our water purification equipment, in combination with solar energy, offers a sustainable and reliable solution for clean and safe water. Through the integration of advanced technologies, we are transforming the way we harness natural resources and contributing to environmental stewardship.

Since June 2022, the Egidio Montesinos Hospital, in Barquisimeto (Venezuela), has a RoL1,000 Atmospheric Water Generator in its facilities.

The equipment has remained operational ever since, supplying the institution with quality drinking water.

Dr. Juana ArroyoThe Director of the health institution confirmed a few days ago her absolute satisfaction with the operation of the equipment: “several units of the hospital and the kitchen itself benefit from more than 50 bottles a day (about 1,000 liters a day), which is a great step forward for the center, since quality water is a fundamental element for us”.

Water for hospitals

The National Hospital Survey published on November 15, 2022 by the NGO Doctors for Health revealed that 2 out of 3 health centers in Venezuela do not have a constant supply of water. This leads to the proliferation of bacteria and germs that affect the health of patients, putting the operation of medical centers at serious risk.

Rain of Life, the solution to the lack of quality drinking water

Rain of Life offers solutions for the supply of quality drinking water with modular technologies (from 50 to 10,000 liters per day), a real alternative to bottled water, with lower economic cost, more environmentally friendly and without having to buy and carry heavy bottles every day. They are adaptable to any terrain or space, can be electrically or solar powered and ensure that anyone can have quick access to quality drinking water.

It is a solution that adapts to the needs of any home, business, hotel, health center, school, university or hospital, such as the Egidio Montesinos Hospital. And in places where there is considerable relative humidity and temperature, it is more efficient and cost-effective than other methods of obtaining and purifying water. And, in addition, much healthier.

From September 19 to 29, more than 2,500 Venezuelan military personnel were deployed in various camps on the Paraguaná peninsula (Venezuela) for strategic training as part of the 17th anniversary of CeoFanb.

The event was attended by representatives from 25 Operational Zones, divided into camps that were set up in each zone with all services. For this purpose, drinking water was supplied to the personnel deployed there through the installation of several Rain of Life atmospheric water generators.

The equipment installed there came from the Punto Fijo plant in Falcón State, which was inaugurated at the beginning of the year. This plant manufactures Rain of Life atmospheric water generators for all of Latin America with Venezuelan labor.

During the military practices, equipment was installed that generated 50 liters of water per day each, thus supplying quality drinking water to all those who attended the event.

Food bacteria are to blame for a large number of illnesses caused by eating spoiled or contaminated food. This risk is especially aggravated with the arrival of heat. High temperatures contribute to the proliferation of microorganisms in food that can have very negative consequences. In this regard, the WHO, on the occasion of World Health Day on April 7, sought to raise awareness of the importance of maintaining correct and adequate hygiene at all stages that are part of the food chain.

Many places suffer from high temperatures throughout the summer season. In fact, the heat can be really extreme for several days, weeks or even months. This phenomenon is known as heat wave, and has very important consequences on health, climate and environment.

In Spain we are facing one of the three driest hydrological years since 1961. Our crops suffer the vicissitudes of the lack of water while we look at the sky and watch the news hoping that, as soon as possible, the weather will give us a respite to recover the water from our reservoirs. “There is a drought” is what we hear when talking about this worrying issue. But do we really know what kind of drought we are facing?

Types of drought

Drought can be defined, in a general way, as a natural condition that occurs in a certain region, in the absence of rainy periods, or when they are very short. This causes a major impact on the habitat and climatic conditions of the environment, even becoming incompatible with life.

But there is a wide variety of types of drought:

Meteorological drought: it is generated when there is a continuous lack of rainfall. It originates due to a global behavior of the atmospheric system, which is influenced by both natural factors and those caused by human action, for example, deforestation or the increase in greenhouse gases. This type of drought is linked to a specific region where these meteorological circumstances occur.

Hydrological drought: It is the decrease in the availability of surface and/or groundwater in a given area during a given time period, compared to historical values. This hydrological drought can cause the complete dissatisfaction of the demand for water.

Agricultural drought: It is the lack of moisture to meet the needs of a crop in a given place and time. In rainfed crops it is linked to meteorological drought, while in irrigated crops it is more linked to hydrological drought.

Socioeconomic drought: it is the effect of water scarcity on people and economic activity as a result of any of the types of drought.

Causes of the lack of water problem

Although we clearly understand drought as a phenomenon associated with climate change and global warming, the truth is that it is convenient to identify cycles of meteorological drought with recent phenomena. Thus, the current situation of drought that we are suffering in our country and in other areas of the planet seems to be clearly related to the La Niña phenomenon , an anomalous cooling of the waters of the Pacific Ocean. It is the conclusion reached by experts such as Juan Jesús González, physicist, researcher in atmospheric dynamics and spokesman for the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet). According to their own statements, the current period of drought that we are facing is the consequence of an anticyclonic blockade that causes a lack of sustained rains over time.

In addition, another clear indicator is the strong thermal oscillation that we have been experiencing at the end of winter. Thermal differences of more than 25ºC between maximum and minimum that have led us to live a “summer winter” in some parts of the country.

Other areas of the world are also suffering these consequences, even more noticeably than in Spain. Thus, the western United States, Latin America and Morocco are facing their worst dry season in the last 30 years.

Global warming, the ultimate culprit

But let’s not fool ourselves. Global warming is, without a doubt, the cause of these alterations in rainfall and in the thermal increase of the planet. This is a reality that the experts responsible for the IPCC (International Panel of Experts on Climate Change) underline in all their reports. They indicate that if the global levels of greenhouse gas emissions are maintained, the heat waves that hit our countries would become annual.

Much of the seagrass beds could disappear by the middle of this century, taking with them the rich biodiversity they harbor. We will also experience more fires, crop losses and agricultural land. And of course, access to clean drinking water globally will be drastically affected. This is because the increase in demand without the renewal of aquifers due to drought could deplete water reserves in the most populated areas of the planet.

These experts also indicate that the situation could not be so devastating if our consumption habits are drastically changed. Changes that lead to a significant reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases.

We are aware of the water pollution problems caused by plastics that fall into the sea. They come from different places: waste dumped on public roads, fishing nets, waste from ships and commercial cargo… These plastics, reduced to microplastics, are responsible for polluting the seas and poisoning marine species. Thus, each year, more than a million birds and more than 100,000 marine mammals die as a result of this invasion of plastics in the sea.

But there is a problem of similar magnitude that is beginning to gain prominence in the concern of scientists and biologists, and that is drug contamination in the water of rivers around the world.

A study published by PNAS on 258 rivers in 104 countries around the world shows that the presence of pharmacological pollutants represents a real threat to environmental and human health in more than a quarter of the places analyzed.

Environmental exposure to active pharmaceutical ingredients can have negative effects on the health of ecosystems and humans, and also represents a global threat to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Pollution of rivers by drugs

The problem of antibiotics and drugs dumped into rivers has been known for a decade, although some regions such as South America and Africa had not been studied until now. The aforementioned study found that South Asia and South America concentrate the majority of rivers with high drug contamination around the world, topping the list of most polluted rivers in the cities of Lahore (Pakistan), La Paz (Bolivia) and Addis Ababa. (Ethiopia). In the case of Europe, the most polluted river is the Manzanares River while, in the United States, the southern city of Dallas has the most polluted river waters in the country.

Regarding the substances that are most found in the fluvial waters studied, anticonvulsants, antidiabetics and caffeine are some of the protagonists of this contamination.

How do drugs get into river water?

The discharge of drugs into the water is partly unavoidable, since it is a consequence of our own consumption. Our kidneys work to excrete “useless” substances from our body. There are studies that indicate that up to 90% of the medicine we take is expelled intact with the urine.

But not only humans are responsible for these events; farm animals, industrial discharges or drugs thrown away, also increase the pharmacological levels of the water.

Damiá Barceló, a member of the Higher Council for Scientific Research and director of the Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA), points out that “close to 20% of European citizens still flush medicines down the toilet, instead of taking them to pharmacies or collection of expired medicines”.

Antibiotics and other medicines.

The discovery of antibiotics in rivers was already a known problem years ago, although in this case, scientists determined that in more than 19% of the regions analyzed the presence of these drugs was so high that it could stimulate the development of resistant bacteria. These bacteria are considered by the WHO as one of the main threats against public health, and it is recognized as a “silent pandemic” that caused more than one million deaths in the world in 2019.

Because obviously the water we consume is subjected to purification and potabilization treatments that are responsible for nullifying the incidence of these toxins, but we must think about the species that live in these waters and that are the most realistic indicator of their level of health. . For example, algae and fish are hopelessly faced with the existence of these high levels of toxins that are detrimental to their existence.

In the case of antidepressants, some studies determine that marine animals can suffer a deterioration in their health due to the intake of these medications. Giovanni Polverino, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Western Australia, recently stated that “The collateral effects of psychoactive pollutants in wildlife are of increasing concern. Psychoactive drugs target receptors in the human brain that are evolutionarily conserved throughout the animal kingdom; so it’s perhaps not surprising that they can affect non-target species.” In other words, the intake of antidepressants by these species can affect their ability to socialize, alter their eating patterns, migratory routes and even their mating. Research published in 2021 also revealed that crayfish exposed to antidepressants present in river waters become much more aggressive, hide much less and are therefore more vulnerable to predators. This certainly affects the food chain and the cycle of life.

But does this affect the water we drink?

The Drinking Water Treatment Plants or Stations (WWTP or WWTP) have means to remove the different contaminants that they may contain from the water. To do this, as we have already mentioned in previous blogs, they have numerous “pools” through which the water passes, and in each of them a contaminant is removed by reacting with some chemical substance that the plant pours into it. However, the huge amount of contaminants from medicines, or emerging contaminants (as they are called in some media) makes it very difficult or almost impossible to find reagents that completely remove them from the water we drink.

In this way, several studies affirm that the water that reaches the taps of our houses contains certain amounts of emerging contaminants or medicines that have not been able to be eliminated in the treatment stations, and that are harmful to health. And this circumstance, as indicated, could be even more serious in the future.

However, the water obtained from the Rain of Life atmospheric generators is unlikely to contain any of these emerging contaminants. For this reason, in addition to many others, its consumption is recommended for drinking and cooking.

The tiny fraction of fresh water that we enjoy is only a very small part of the total volume of water on earth. Groundwater is distributed quite unevenly around the world.

Know all the circumstances surrounding groundwater.