Salvador Bentolila, author of A Kids Book About Water, talks about what water is, where it comes from, why it’s so important, and how you can take action today to protect the water in your community and the world. Every drop counts!
Salvador Bentolila, author of A Kids Book About Water, talks about what water is, where it comes from, why it’s so important, and how you can take action today to protect the water in your community and the world. Every drop counts!
A Kids Book About Water (view book)
Full Book Description:
Water is a necessity for all life, from humans, to animals, to plants and trees! And this essential resource is limited—it’s our shared responsibility to treat it with care. Learn about what water is, where it comes from, why it’s so important, and how you can take action today to protect the water in your community and the world. Every drop counts!
About the Author:
Salvador (he/him) is a civil engineer whose career has always focused on water. He first designed systems to supply water in Africa and then managed projects to build water infrastructure in New York. Now, he implements technology to plan, design, build and operate water-related projects.
*If you want to be on a future episode of A Kids Book About: The Podcast or if you have a question you’d like us to consider, have a grownup email us at listen@akidsco.com and we’ll send you the details.
A Kids Book About: The Podcast
Salvador Talks About Water
[INTRODUCTION]
Matthew: What is water?
Julia: Water is like... A type of liquid that you can drink, but you can't drink it, like, in the ocean because it has salt in it, like sea salt or something like that.
Salvador: It's a molecule that's made up of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms bonded together.
And when water is in natural state, it's liquid. At regular room temperature and atmospheric pressure it is a liquid. It doesn't have a taste. It doesn't have a color. It doesn't have an odor. That's what is water by itself.
Matthew: Welcome to A Kids Book About: The Podcast! I’m Matthew. I’m a teacher, a librarian, and I’m your host.
The voices you heard just a moment ago were from Julia and Salvador.
Each week we talk about the big things going on in your world with a different author from our A Kids Book About series.
Salvador: Hi, my name is Salvador Bentolila and I am from Venezuela. I'm the author of A Kids Book About Water that I recently published. And my background is in civil engineering. I've been spending all of my career so far around the water industry. I started as a design engineer for projects. In the field of water supply and irrigation.
Then I moved on to manage projects and the construction of wastewater facilities. And right now I deal with technology used for managing, operating, designing and, and planning projects in the water industry.
So that's who I am and I'm very glad to be here on the show and talk a little bit more about the book.
[TOPIC FOUNDATION]
Matthew: Oh my goodness what a very big topic we’re taking on today: water. But also, how often do we get the chance to take a few minutes to really understand how water gets to us in a form that’s safe to drink and to use to clean our dishes, our homes, and our bodies? And how often do we have the opportunity to consider how access to water looks and feels different around the world?
So let’s start at the most basic question after “What is water?”, which is “Why is water important?”
Salvador:To me, the way I see water is the basis of life. It's one of the first things that human beings and also animals and my microorganisms rely on for life and, and to grow.
You know, if you study some history, you'll see that some of the, the first major cities, they started nearby a river or wherever there was a water source available because that helped with the population and growing for transports. Water is really used everywhere, right?
You need water for crops to irrigate the crops that gives us food that we eat on a daily basis. It's used for cleaning places, for cleaning your dishes, your car, your clothes, or even the house and buildings where we live. It's used in emergency situations, like when firefighters need to put up a fire. Or animals, right? We spoke about that. So, so they can live. And also ships for transporting goods or products from, from country to country.
So it's really used across so many industries that it plays an irreplaceable role in our lives, right? Even in manufacturing products, water is used. So, yeah, those are some of the places why water is important in our lives.
Matthew: We use water to clean our body, to hydrate, and to relax and cool off, but our body actually relies on water in order to keep us healthy.
Salvador: You might have heard that a big portion of our bodies are made up of water, somewhere around 60 to 70 percent. That percentage can change from person to person, man and woman. I'm sure doctors will be able to tell you better.
In general, water helps you keep your skin, your eyes moist. It really helps as well, making sure that you have oxygen throughout your body, you know, via, via your blood. It also helps clear, clear out any waste in your body through your urine or sweat. It helps with your body temperature and prevents headaches.
You might note that some days you can get a headache and one of the reasons might be because you haven't had enough water that day. So pay attention next time you get a headache and think about how much water have I drank that day and see, um, I know for me, that's something that used to happen. And ever since I started paying attention, I've been able to. to reduce the headaches I get just by being conscious and drinking a little bit more water.
Matthew: Basically, water matters for everything.
Julia: Water is important because... It, um, it makes you healthy, and you should at least be having two, like, two bottles of water a day, probably.
Matthew: That’s right!
Let’s take a quick break. And when we return, Salvador will talk more about what we can do to help ensure that all people around the world have access to clean drinking water and just why water matters for everything.
Salvador: All the different industries that that water touches, right? The production of products, food, transportation, your bodies, cleaning, right? All of that.
And perhaps what's also worth highlighting here is that even though about 70% of our planet is made up of water, there's really only a tiny amount of it that's available for us because most of that water is salt, salt water, right? It's in the oceans, which if, if it goes under a certain treatment, removing the salt, it can be consumed by us. It's just an extra level of treatment that takes up resources and energy. Right?
And really what's available as fresh water, which is what, what we can drink and use, most of it, it is, it's either frozen in glaciers or in the ice caps. And there's another tiny percentage that's groundwater, which you can also access it, but you have to dig wells. And then a very, very tinier amount is the surface water, which is what you see on your daily life, right? In, in a river or a lake or, or a waterfall when you go for a hike. And, and that's really of the overall water percentage of, on earth, it's around 1% that's available for us in surface water.
So in addition of water being important because it's involved in so, so many industries and places in our life, it's also important to conserve that little percent that's available to us.
And that's not even considering the fact that, that. It's not evenly distributed all across the planet, right? Some places have more than others and that can be a separate topic by itself.
Matthew: We’ll be back in just a moment.
[BREAK]
Matthew: Welcome back.
Today on the podcast we’re talking about water with A Kids Book About author Salvador Bentolila.
Before the break, we talked about what water is and how water is used in nearly every aspect of our daily lives.
In this half of our conversation, I want to spend time shining a light on water access around the world. You may be listening to this episode from a space where you can readily wash your hands, where you can receive hot or cold water from a faucet, where you can freely use water to wash your car or water your garden or fill your pool. For many of us, water is so accessible that we don’t even really give it a second thought.
But that is not the case around the world.
And so I asked Salvador, why don't some people seem to value water and their access to water?
Salvador: Yeah, it's, it's a good question and also one hard to respond.
A few reasons I can think of is, you know, just if you're in a place where water is more available than others, you might not be as conscious as others about how, how valuable water is, right? And, and that's, that's really something I try to, and I think it's, it's good in general to, to have in mind constantly, right? To value things regardless of how widely they're available to you, of how much you have of them, right?
And I think you can apply this to every aspect of your life, right? If you're someone very wealthy, then it still means you got to value your wealth. If you're someone with a very healthy person, you can equally value your health and the fact that you are in good health on a daily basis.
So same applies with water, right? I think the fact that if you can go to any tap in your home and open it, get water, you should still be thankful for it and conscious to conserve it as much as possible.
So, there might be, you know, a little bit work to do in terms of awareness and consciousness about the importance of water and what can be done to conserve it just so people can start getting into that habit of, of preserve it as a resource and understanding how valuable it is.
[PERSONAL CONNECTION TO TOPIC]
Matthew: Salvador has had the opportunity to live and work in different places around the world, and access to clean, running water has looked different in each place.
Salvador: I've actually lived the extremes of that. You know, both of the extremes of that situation.
I've been in Kenya where I've seen high schools where students don't have access to any shape or form of water supply. You know, they go to the school every day, if they can, if, and there's no water to wash your hands before you eat, or after you go to the toilet. And some students even are not able to go to school because they have to walk for certain time and certain number of times during the day to collect water for their families. It's a known issue there.
And I've also lived through the other extreme. Right now I live in Florida where there's still a lot of abundance of water and rainfall. And you, like I was saying before, you can open your tap and get clean water. You can drink it straight from the tap. I've seen water being used to, to pressure wash sidewalks and roads, which is still something that I can't wrap my head around, if that's the best use of water.
And you see floods all the time, right? Because of a poor drainage system, you see a lot of water being in parking lots and ultimately being polluted and wasted instead of being recycled. And I lived in the middle range places where during some periods of the year, there's less water available. During others you have more abundance or you're just, there's, you can see and feel more consciousness in the general population about water.
So it's like, it's not evenly distributed across the world. And that's one of, I think, one of our goals as many is to try to conserve it as much as possible. And whoever doesn't have the right access to it, get it to, to the extent possible.
Matthew: Our time’s almost up. I’m about to send you back out into the world. So let’s take a moment to consider how we can use this knowledge we gained together to help look out for the people with whom we share this world: our friends, our classmates, our family, our community.
Salvador? Are there any actions we, the listeners, can take to better honor water and to help ensure equitable access to water for people all around the world?
Salvador: A few things you can do if I can say on the more active side, just being a little bit more, more conscious about the water you use and try to conserve it wherever where possible, you know, whether that is simply a shoulder shower or turning the faucet off while you brush your teeth, using more efficient appliances, water efficient appliances.
And even try to conserve the water that that's out there, right? Like I was saying before, in rivers or lakes or even the oceans, because eventually some, some countries are treating seawater, and even if they're not, we know that there's also the environmental side of it, that it pollutes and doesn't contribute very well to the marine life. So that, that's more on the active side.
On, more on the passive side, then there's a ton of non organizations that you can donate your time or money to. like Engineers Without Borders. There's also Charity Water that I really like as an organization because they're very transparent about where your money goes. They make sure that a hundred percent of your donations goes to water projects, and they have a really good way of quantifying your impact, right? Like they know if you donate this amount of dollars, you're helping one or two or three people get access to water. And, and, and then they, they track their projects down and they, they send the report back to you. So you know exactly what, what your money did. And, and there's others organizations as well.
So that's, that's what I would share with everyone and, and also obviously. to feel free to reach out to me if you want to talk more about the topic or have any questions. I'm super happy to chat more. You can reach out to me via LinkedIn or my email and I'll be happy to set some time to talk with you.
[CLOSING]
Matthew: Thank you to Salvador Bentolila, author of A Kids Book About Water, for joining us today. And special thanks to Julia for lending their voice to this episode.
Julia: Yep. Hi, my name is Julia, and I'm eight years old. I live in Maryland. And I, and I live in Maryland. And my favorite thing to do is art.
A Kids Book About: The Podcast is written, edited, and produced by me, Matthew Winner. Our executive producer is Jelani Memory.
And this show was brought to you by A Kids Co.
Follow the show wherever podcasts are found and check out other podcasts made for kids just like you by visiting akidsco.com.
Join us next time for a conversation about gay parents with A Kids Book About authors Jonathan and Thomas West.