To people who don't work with water on a
regular basis, there is the common misperception that 'water is water is water'.
Conversely, to those who work with water every day for agriculture, industrial,
and commercial purposes, it's clear that waters are as variable as their unique
individual sources. Having said that, it's not uncommon for us to
encounter these same 'large-scale water users' who have never hit the multiply key on their calculator as
they consider those parts per million numbers of the various minute components
in their water source. When you start dealing in acre-feet, you can
suddenly find yourself realizing that water is your major crop input in terms of
chemistry and those parts per million numbers have now turned into pounds per
acre.
Most work done in amending water is truly
run of the mill and could even be called mundane. But if you happen to be
unfamiliar with the various ways that water may need to be amended, you can take
a perfectly good farm, industrial process, or commercial use and completely
destroy it in fairly short order. Dump 500 pounds of salt per acre on your
farm for a couple of seasons and see how it does. Use impure water in a
chemical process and see if the product is the one your chemist formulated.
Operate your restaurant kitchen with hard water and see how long your customers
keep coming back and how long your pots, pans, dishes, and other equipment
lasts. Now you start to catch an inkling of what's at stake. We are going to be talking here for a few paragraphs in
more...