Despite decades of work to reduce pollution from industries, sewage plants, and runoff, the nation’s potable water supply remains at great risk. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the earth's surface is 71% water, but only 2.5% of that volume is potable. Nearly 70% of that supply is ice and almost 30% is subsurface, held both as soil moisture and within underground aquifers. That leaves .007-.009% usable potable water for people.
The pressure on this small supply increases as the world population grows, agricultural needs expand, and business and industrial needs increase. About 20% of processed water is used by manufacturing and industry; 6% is used in residential settings; and 74% is used for irrigation/agriculture. Please also read this article at Suite 101.
Even Treated Wastewater is Dangerous
Treated waste carries bacteria, nitrogen, and phosphorus that can contaminate drinking water in streams, rivers, lakes, and bays. These nutrients contribute to blooms of algae and microbes that deplete oxygen levels as they grow and decay, choking fish and other aquatic life.
Concern also continues mounting over caffeine, antibiotics, hormones, and compounds in human waste that threaten potable water supplies and the wider environment. Throughout America, the levels of nitrogen from failing septic systems continue to increase, in some cases reaching levels that jeopardize the health of pregnant women and infants.
Toxic Soil, Plants, and Animals
The Environmental Protection Agency Handbook, Fact Sheet 3. “Septage Treatment and Disposal, 625684009, reports: “There’s a potential for heavy metals and pathogens to contaminate soil, water, air, vegetation, and animal life, and ultimately to be hazardous to humans."
Metals can accumulate in the soil, causing phytotoxic effects. Toxins such as cadmium also accumulate in plant tissues, entering the food chain to reach humans directly by ingestion or indirectly through animals.
Toxic materials can contaminate groundwater supplies. They can be transported by runoff or erosion to surface waters. Aerosols containing pathogenic organisms are spread where spray irrigation is used.
Besides threatening water supplies and local fisheries, hundreds of millions in tax dollars and billions in development opportunities are at risk. Some groups argue that water quality and the environment have taken a back seat to growth and cost-cutting measures that often benefit developers and county and local governments
The Risks of Doing Nothing
Clean, safe water, does not mean pure in the chemical sense. It refers instead to the dynamic balance between nonliving macro-nutrient-scarce matter and living organisms in water. This balance in relationships of life forms to one another, perhaps developed over the course of a couple of billions of years, are always changing yet always stable, expanding in diversity, and always healthy. What happened to disrupt this equilibrium?
In brief, there was a sudden infusion (sudden compared to the slow pace of evolution) of nutrients into the Earth's waters - in the form of water-borne human excreta. To learn how water came to be used to transport human excreta, how bodies of water came to be used as the recipient dumps for the water-borne excreta, and what environmental effects have been associated with the chain of behavioral and technological developments resulting from these practices, please read about the history of water pollution. Of course, the huge issue is how to pay for clean up during this worldwide financial crisis.
References:
- National Environment Services Center, West Virginia University, “Wastewater Management Surfaces as an Important Issue in the New Millennium,” 2007.
- Water Encyclopedia, Published by John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY, 2007
- United States Environmental Protection Agency, Watershed News, March 2007.
John Anderson - John Anderson has worked as a journalist, editor, advertising executive, Internet pioneer, and he has authored four books.
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