The January thaw brought rain, lots of it, washing out the snow cover, flowing over ice and creating temporary flooding along streams and rivers, to say nothing of area basements, like ours.

“I’m not going down there,” my husband said, putting his ice fishing catch in the refrigerator instead of the downstairs freezer. “I don’t want to see it.”

I was washing dishes, trying to remember to turn off the running water until it was time to rinse.

Water’s been on my mind for a couple of weeks.

We live in a place where water is abundant, and in a country where we take it for granted that water will flow in the sink or shower at the turn of a knob.

We’re so spoiled by this abundance we scoff at it, wasting gallons at a time as we wash dishes or cars or driveways, buying drinking water in plastic bottles shipped from distant filtering and bottling plants, as if what flows from our taps is not drinkable.

My neighbors just came back from Haiti, where they spent the better part of a week cleaning and bandaging wounds in a makeshift medical tent in the middle of a rubble-strewn neighborhood. Water’s been on their minds too.

They have connections to Haiti, through family, friends and a few generations of mission work. And when they decided they had to do something to help after the earthquake there, the first thing they did was collect supplies to bring down. Among the most important donations they received — after the use of a plane and pilot — were water purification systems: 10,000 individual units and several HydroWell units, which can filter almost any water into drinkable water.

Getting clean water to people in the most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere was a challenge long before the earthquake. Contaminated water causes diseases — from cholera to chronic diarrhea — and is the leading cause of child and infant mortality in Haiti, according to International Action, a Washington-based nongovernmental organization that operates the Campaign for Clean Water in Haiti.

Since the earthquake, what infrastructure there was to carry drinking water to people in the most populous part of the country was destroyed.

Last Tuesday — a full two weeks after the quake — the Canadian Disaster Assistance Response Team started delivering drinking water from a purification plant set up to desalinate sea water. DART “was forced to take salty water from the Caribbean Sea, and go through a long filtering process because rivers are so polluted,” the Canadian Press reported.

FIJI and other bottled water companies donated hundreds of thousands of liters of bottled water, marked “For Humanitarian Aid Only,” which the U.S. Army air-lifted and dropped to the ground. A hard rain, falling more than a week after the quake hit.

The World Health Organization estimates that about 20 percent of the world’s population lacks access to clean drinking water. That’s all the time, not just after a natural disaster. In Haiti, before the earthquake, only an estimated 28 percent of the population had access to clean water.

And here, we have water to waste. Americans use on average more than 69 gallons of water a day, just in their homes, according to the American Water Works Association. Europeans use a little more than half that.

Still, I struggle to understand how my saving water at home can help the people of the world without access to water. How collecting rain to water the animals, or turning off the tap while brushing my teeth can make any difference at all.

It’s hard to fathom, when we live in a place with ample rain, laced with streams and dotted with lakes, that water is a finite resource. But as the world’s population grows, and as our energy use multiplies, we are using fresh water — at home, on our farms, in our factories — much faster than it can be replenished.

Saving water at home is not only about the gallons you don’t pour down the drain. Increased water use translates into increased energy use, which means increased pollution, which, ultimately, means less clean water on earth.

Maybe the Budget Ecoist says it more simply: “Consider this: Turning on the faucet isn’t just about water usage; it takes energy to collect, purify and pump the water that makes its way to our homes. In addition, any water that goes down the drain needs to be treated, which also requires energy. Add in the energy needed to heat water for household use, and we can quickly see the environmental implications every time we turn on the tap.”

And if nothing else, saving water will help reduce your utility bills. And then you’ll have extra money to donate to the people with no access to water at all.

Margaret Hartley is the Gazette’s Sunday and features editor. Greenpoint appears in the Gazette’s print edition Sundays on the Environment page.

Have a question or a topic you’d like addressed on Greenpoint? Email greenpoint@dailygazette.net.