In plenty of areas where water is needed, the time it would take for the big circular arrow "water cycle" to replenish it is so long, it should be considered a finite resource.

Ars Technica had a great article about this a few years back, likening "peak water" to "peak oil": http://arstechnica.com/science/2010/05/not-just-oil-us-hit-p...

The Dutch are not master farmers, you are just in a fairly moist climate and the culture has been relatively uninterrupted due to political strength that you obtained through the plunder of the developing world. I don't think your water security is anything to be proud of. How is water security in the former Dutch colonies these days?

"In the Netherlands water pollution originating from agriculture is an important environmental concern. While recent trends indicate that the pressure from farming on water quality is diminishing, absolute levels of pollution remain amongst the highest across the OECD (Figures 2-5). Agriculture is the major source of nutrients, pesticides and the only known source of heavy metals in water. Pollution from endocrine disrupters and veterinary medicines in terms of potential impacts on human and wildlife reproductive systems is also a concern. The total external costs of agricultural water pollution are unknown, but in the late 1990s the annual external costs of eutrophication associated with nitrate emissions was estimated at €600 million (US$540 million), and for treating drinking water polluted with nitrates at an annual cost of €23 million (US$21 million)."

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07900627.2010.53...

That water is "lost" by any practical definition. For humans to use it again, it would have to be desalinated, which is expensive.