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Posts Tagged ‘drinking water’
Where Has All The Water Gone?
Sunday, February 27th, 2011Around the world, freshwater sources are shrinking as lake, river and aquifer levels are falling faster than can be replenished. In addition, the usefulness of water contained in these natural reservoirs is being compromised by pollution from industrial and household chemicals. It is estimated that worldwide water consumption doubles every 20 years, with predictions that demand will surpass supply within 30 years. That may be too optimistic. With all of these conditions persisting, it’s no wonder that public concerned interest in our water resources and drinking water quality is exponentially rising.
Impact of Water Runoff
One explanation for falling water table levels is offered by Richard McGrath, director of codes and standards, Cement Association of Canada: “The increased use of hardscaping (impervious pavements) in our major urban areas allows the direct run-off of oil and other contaminants into the storm water system, preventing the recharging of groundwater levels and natural purification of the run-off water.”
Storm water runoff that would normally seep through the porous ground must often find its own path across toxic paved areas. The resulting environmental waste water is re-routed to man-made runoff areas. Household ‘grey water’, the water waste from sinks and washing is increasingly contaminated with household chemicals. Now, this more toxic soup of water runoff either saturates the surrounding land or gets routed through community sewer systems to water treatment plants where industrial filtration attempts to make it drinkable. More can learned about this phenomenon in our article reviewing the importance of Karst conservation.
Disturbance of Natural Waterways
Another contributor to the depletion and contamination of our water sources is the fact that housing development is no longer limited to geographical locations with a ready source of water. Today, people routinely live in areas where water must be transported hundreds of miles from a distant water source. A great example of this is Las Vegas, NV where water is routed from hundreds of miles away and is recognized as the lifeline to it’s survival. To accomplish this, the natural course of rivers gets rerouted without consideration for the long-term implications. Businesses have the ability to purchase the rights to divert water from a lake, river, aquifer, or other natural source further depleting reserves. Ultimately what occurs is that rivers and lakes that would normally be naturally replenished begin to dry up under the high demand of urban and residential growth. All the while, most residents are completely unaware that their valuable water resources are being increasingly contaminated while also slowly diminishing in availability.
We Need To Protect Our Water Supplies
Waters that were once generously replenished and filtered by nature are now being depleted and soiled by humans. This places a large percentage of the population at an increased risk from their drinking water as these once plentiful and pristine sources are becoming contaminated and scarce. For all of these reasons, it is increasingly important for individuals to monitor the water quality from their faucets and ensure they have a quality water filter at their disposal. Also, it’s imperative that we become more proactive as a society in protecting our existing water supplies for future generations.
Safe Drinking Water Act No Longer Protecting Our Drinking Water
Thursday, December 17th, 2009In another damning blow to our US drinking water quality, the New York Times printed another article today as part of their “Toxic Waters, Outdated Laws”, series. (Last week’s drinking water article commentary here) I stumbled across this as I raced through the airport trying to catch a flight to Nashville. There I see it, at the airport mini-mart kiosk on the front page of the NYT; That tap water is legal, but may be unhealthy. As I read these sorts of articles and scientific reports often, I was expecting some more rehashing of the usual dismal conditions of our municipal water systems. This was the case, however there was an important connection made relating the growing problem of our water quality to the shrinking amount of funds to fix it.
Drinking Water Quality Downtrend
Not only are we failing miserably in keeping pace by defining and categorizing all the chemicals that continue to show up in our drinking water. But, even if we do, the majority of municipalities are going to be unable to afford the type of upgrades or replacement treatment facilities that would be needed to remove these chemicals. This is a scary thought, trying to fix a behemoth of a problem that continues to grow fast, with limited funds and resources to do so. The reality is that the water quality challenges the US and most other developed countries are facing would be intimidating if we had unlimited funds and finances. As a society are we really ready to acknowledge the severity of this problem and fight this uphill battle? Home water filters are only a short term solution to a long term problem. Here are some of my favorite quotes that appear in the article.
“Only 91 contaminants are regulated by the Safe Water Drinking Act, yet more than 60,000 chemicals are used withing the United States according to the Environmental Protection Agency.” Mind you, the Safe Water Drinking Act is 35 years old and no additional chemicals have been added to the regulated list since 2000!
“People don’t understand that just because water is technically legal, it can still present health risks” Dr. Pankaj Parekh - Director of the water quality division for LA, California. - Speaking in regard to challenges he’s faced in trying to reduce/remove chemicals that are not on the SDWA watch list.
“For years, people said that America has the cleanest drinking water in the world. That was true 20 years ago. But, people don’t realize how many new chemicals have emerged and how much more pollution has occurred. If they did, we would see very different attitudes.” William K Reilly, EPA administrator under President George H. W. Bush
“Government scientists have evaluated 830 contaminants most often found in water supplies…and they have determined that many of them are associated with cancer or other diseases, even at small concentrations. Yet, almost none of these assessments have been incorporated into the SWDA or other federal laws”
“In May, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed the Water Infrastructure Financing Act which, if approved by congress and signed by President Obama, would authorize $14.7 Billion in loans to help states improve their systems.” A step in the right direction, but the article also quotes that a new system for LA could be upwards of $800M. We simply need to move faster and act with more urgency.
20% of Municipalities Violate Safe Drinking Water Act - NYT Reports
Saturday, December 12th, 2009This week, the New York Times reported on it’s disturbing findings of an investigation into the US municipal water systems that serve millions of Americans. It highlights failures and obvious enforcement gaps in current government regulations that we’ve assumed are protecting our drinking water, including the realization that 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Water Quality (Un)enforcement
The discovery that municipalities fail water quality reports is nothing new, but what’s a little surprising is that the majority of municipalities that received violations were never penalized for their failures in meeting water safety requirements. Many were given a pass under the impression that fining would be counterproductive to cash-strapped municipalities. This has serious ramifications to our public health and needs to be regarded as such.
Contaminants in our Drinking Water
As I’ve written about in earlier articles, this is partly a byproduct of the public’s assumption that our drinking water is safe with no spotlight being placed on the regulators. The American people are coping with many other personal and financial issues, and unless it makes headlines, they are unaware of the continuing destruction of our water sources thanks to human pollution. As the NYT points out, water treatment facilities are struggling with the current identified list of monitored contaminants, but this is only half the story. The cold hard fact is that there exists an inability for private and government organizations to keep pace in identifying and filtering out the swelling number of chemicals that continue to show up in our water supply. As long as we continue to increase our use of chemicals in products and manufacturing, then it’s a safe bet to assume that the chemicals and contaminants found in our water will continue to increase in lockstep.
We Must Improve Our Drinking Water Quality Regulations
In this New York Times report, many of the water contaminants that show links to cancer were the very same contaminants that these towns were found to be in violation of. In one referenced example, “the E.P.A. has reported that more than three million Americans have been exposed since 2005 to drinking water with illegal concentrations of arsenic and radioactive elements, both of which have been linked to cancer at small doses.” As was mentioned in our lead in our drinking water post, schools are far from exempt from this poor water quality problem, as a more recent article by the NYT on Dec 8th covers; Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on EPA School Water Quality We need to continue to increase out awareness of how we affect the water supply through pollution and daily living habits, but we must also be aware that water we had originally assumed was healthy for consumption may require a run through a quality water filter prior to drinking.
Indianapolis - Polluted River Water, Pt’s 1 & 2
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008A water treatment plant in Indianapolis has been dumping sewage overflow into the White River for over 40 years now. This is a river that people swim and fish in…even though there are warning signs posted. Pay attention to the amount of E-Coli they find from a river sample.
It makes you wonder how much of this contaminated water made it into the water supply of the downstream popuation over these 40 years. What seeped into the well water systems? Was it filtered out in some way? I’d be real interested to see illness or cancer rates across this potentially affected population to look for correlations. Environmentally speaking, this is just sad.
