Napoga is a 12-year-old girl in Ghana（加纳）， Africa. It is hard for her family to get clean water. Every morning， she leaves home at half past five to get clean water for her family in a village far away. It takes her six hours to get enough clean water for daily（日常） cooking and drinking. She has no time to go to school or to play with her friends. Millions of people in the world are like Napoga. They can‘t get enough clean water to keep healthy.
Earth Day is April 22. But on all other days， we must also remember it. The water we use is the most important natural resource（自然资源） on the earth.
Water covers 70% of the earth‘s surface（表面）。 But most of that is sea water. We can’t use it for very many things. Fresh water covers only 1% of the earth‘s surface.
You probably feel lucky that your life isn‘t as hard as Napoga’s. But that doesn‘t mean you don’t have to worry about water. We all face serious water problems. One of them is water pollution. All kinds of things from cars， factories， farms and homes make our rivers， lakes， and oceans dirty. Polluted water is very bad for people to drink. And dirty water is bad for fish， too. Now， 34% of all kinds of fish are dying out.
