About Water

Water is found pretty much everywhere on planet Earth, including the atmosphere and the frozen polar ice-caps.

Most water on the planet is salty and is not good to drink. We are lucky in Ireland that we have plenty of fresh water. The problem is that we don’t always look after it.

The salty water is found in vast oceans like the Atlantic Ocean. There are five oceans in all: The Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, Antarctic Ocean and Arctic Ocean. There are also seas, like the Irish Sea. These are full of water that is not good to drink because it is too salty!

Fresh water is found in surface waters such as rivers, lakes and streams and we have many of these in Ireland! They all have fresh water that might be good to drink, but only if that water is clean and has been properly treated.

There are also vast amounts of water underground that we cannot see, except when it comes to the surface as spring wells, rivers or turloughs. A turlough is a ‘disappearing lake’ found in areas covered in a special type of rock called karst limestone. When the level of the underground water is high, these lakes become flooded. They then dry up again when the underground water level drops. In some countries underground water bursts out of the ground as ‘geysers’!