The Problem of Safe Water - The Lernaean Hydra?

Could Greek mythology's water serpent, the Lernaean Hydra, be is an excellent model to define our problem of Safe water aka freshwater?

The Lernaean Hydra

Lernaean Hydra
Source - eaudrey.com

The Hydra was the guardian of the Underworld and lived beneath the waters of a lake, the Lake of Lerna. It was shaped like a serpent with its heads its unique feature: It had multiple heads and would grow two heads for every one head that was cut off. One of the Hydra's heads was called the Immortal Head because it could not be cut off.

Heraces
(silver sculpture from the 1530s)
Source - wikipedia.org

Heracles (Hercules, to us) was charged with the task to kill the Hydra. He initially tried cutting off individual heads but saw two new heads replace those he chopped off.

Eventually he did figure out a way to kill the Hydra. Maybe, Heracles' solution shows us the way to solve the problem of safe water - more on this in the next blog post.

Constant Amount of Freshwater Precipitation 

Precipitation in rain, snow and other forms is the only act of nature that makes safe drinking water (aka freshwater) a renewable resource.

Annual Precipitation
Source - http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2008/VernonWu.shtml

The aggregate global annual freshwater precipitation has stayed more-or-less constant over time - it has never changed in an amount that might give us reason to classify freshwater as a nonrenewable resource! 

Variability in annual amount is not significant by any measure.

Whatever action humanity may take, this cycle of aggregate precipitation continues unabated. So there would conceivably not be a water problem at all unless we are missing something

India precipitation change
Source - delayedoccilater.wordpress.com

Changing precipitation patterns

Change in US precipitation
Source - meted.ucar.edu

Change in Africa precipitation
Source - scrippsblogs.ucsd.edu

This missing something is variability in local rainfall, snowfall and other deposits of freshwater i.e. the variability in aggregate precipitation at any single location. 

The problem of safe water is, thus, characterized in the changes that surface when we examine local changes in precipitation patterns.

How is the Problem of Freshwater a Hydra?
Our global precipitation amount is the body of the Hydra that doesn't change while the heads are the local problems that are as many as places where people live and work - a new factory needs additional safe water but may end up polluting a local stream from where we used to get freshwater; a city grows in population that requires the city fathers to build a new aqueduct to transport safe water from hundreds of miles away; simply look at any local community for its future vulnerabilities to its existing safe water supplies!
Like the Hydra of Heracles, our Hydra of freshwater supply grows a new head - usually too many multiple new heads - whenever local precipitation levels change beyond humanity's ability to counter that change with a compensating change in demand.

The Challenge of Safe Water

Humanity's ability to cope at the local level with the variability of nature's continuously renewed safe water supply is our primary challenge that can rip apart the foundations of our societies everywhere in the world, once again, in the 21st century.

Freshwater's Supply Chain is Unlike that of Any Other Resource!

Freshwater is a resource like no other. While differences between freshwater and other renewable and non-renewable resources are many, freshwater's supply chain makes freshwater a most unique natural and renewable resource. Nature delivers freshwater in ways it doesn't do for any other resource. 
Freshwater's Current 3-Source Supply Chain

Source - willoughby.nsw.gov.au

3 sources of freshwater exist for most human settlements. These are:
1. Rainwater that naturally falls on the settlement
2. Freshwater transported from near and far locations  to the settlement, and
3. Locally obtained water, usually from a combination of sources located at ground level (e.g. rivers and lakes) and below ground (e.g. wells that tap the local water table).
Some locations do not, of course, have all 3 sources available to them -  but most do, because this 3-source approach was seen as the most prudent and dependable one.
Threat's to the 3-Source Supply
All three sources can be threatened today in a variety of ways for human settlements in different locations:
1. Climate change has impacted the frequency, amount and location of rainfall.
2. The ability to bring water from remote locations is threatened by both dwindling resources at the remote location and the assertion of communities along the transportation route to the freshwater being transported.
3. Continued extraction of groundwater has lowered water table levels, in some cases to depths that are difficult to access.
Rainfall - Resource delivery on a near-regular schedule

Source - diswaterdrams.com

Other than freshwater, nature delivers no other natural resource on a fairly regular schedule to locations where the resource may also be ingeniously available in bulk. 
Delivery of freshwater as rain was probably of little value while humans were migrating all over the globe. Rainfall's value only became evident about 10,000 years ago, when humans chose to settle down in one place (and grow the food they needed) instead of moving around in search of food. Humans, in a sense, became dependent on rainfall at the start of the agricultural age.
Rainfall Dependency
Once reliant on rain to grow their food, humans became subject to the impacts of any change in rainfall delivery frequency, amount or location. And it is, in large part, this dependency that is shaping a crisis in freshwater supply - supply of rain is simply too undependable.
The one unique feature that defines freshwater delivery is today the one unique force behind freshwater scarcity and water security.