More than half of the water used for drinking, washing and irrigating comes from under the ground. This subterranean (地下的)water is known as groundwater.
It is generally taken for granted that the groundwater drawn from wells is present every where and will always be available and clean and safe to drink. But experts are reporting that groundwater sources can dry up through overuse, or become contaminated as a result of pollution, poor sanitation (卫生)or salt water intrusion.
This "invisible resource"—as groundwater was described by the United Nations for its 1998 observance (纪念)of World Day for Water—is slowly emerging in political, economic and personal affairs.
With demand growing and supply presenting greater difficulties, groundwater is on the way to becoming a boom business. The World Bank estimates that the developing countries will require investments totaling $600 billion to repair and improve water systems. Of the investments that are actually made, a substantial amount will be devoted to extracting and piping groundwater, primarily for agricultural use and secondarily for industry and household consumption. With a trend towards privatization of public services, it can be expected that a growing portion of investments in water will come from the private sector; requirements that governments privatize water utilities are already being written into the terms of multilateral loans. One consequence of growing privatization may be that access to water will not be regraded as a right, but as a function of economic markets.
Groundwater, which in its natural state is more protected than surface water, is the preferred source of drinking water for cities. But pressure is being placed on groundwater resources lying close to urban areas by exploding populations, as the portion of the world"s people residing in citied balloons from 31 percent in 1995 to a projected 50 percent in 2005. And there is also the pressure of dollars to purchase land lying above groundwater sources and to keep it in a natural state, in order to protect aquifers(蓄水层)from contamination. In the developing countries, where urban population growth is surpassing sewage systems, the problem of untreated human waste is extremely serious.
Alongside the problems of public groundwater sources is the increased consumption of privately bottled water, most of which is named spring water, i.e. groundwater. Consumption of bottled water in the United States, for instance, has risen from virtually nil(零)in the 1950s to 843 million gallons in 1984 and 2.95 billion gallons in 1997. But drinking bottled water is not just a trend for the middle classes. In developing countries, water pipes rarely extend to the poorer neighbourhoods, and residents have no choice but to pay high prices for bottled water.
Political leaders and analysts are talking more frequently about the possibility that increasing demand for precious groundwater will lead to cross—border conflicts, even wars. It is not easy to resolve disputes over the highest groundwater rights, since many aquifers and underground streams cross national borders; and a well drilled vertically within the boundaries of one country may very well be drawing water from the same aquifer, also chosen by a neighbouring nation. Inclined and even horizontal drilling further complicates this issue.
单选题
The passage mainly talks about the privatization of groundwater.