Explore More: Water Quality | Full Program – Transcript

00:04water is one of our planet's most important natural resources in fact it's a resource we literally can't live without

00:46how much do you really know about water did you know there's as much water on the earth now as there was when the earth was formed there will never be any more or any less did you know that 97% of that water supply is saltwater in the oceans and unusable for our daily needs that another 2% is frozen in ice caps and Glaciers so that leaves just 1% of the planet's entire water supply are rivers lakes and groundwater to meet

01:13everyone's water needs here's the catch many of those rivers lakes and groundwater sources are impaired endangered by pollutants that's right this limited resource we all use day in and day out is in serious Jeopardy from plain old dirt to toxic chemicals pollutants in our waterways are threatening our health and the health of the environment so how are these pollutants getting into our waterways and what can we do about it that's the complicated puzzle we'll

01:41Explore More Today solving the water quality puzzle is an enormous challenge simply because there are so many pieces to consider the ways we use water the practices that threaten it the different pollutants in the water and the sources of those pollutants and hydrology the water cycle and ways we've interfered with it complicating the puzzle even more these pieces never combine in exactly the same way every community's water

02:09quality problems are unique and depend entirely on which pieces are in play simply understanding the role each piece plays isn't enough to solve problems you have to understand the fit between the pieces their relationship to one another the way they're at work within your community create your specific water problems ready to dive in the first piece of the puzzle is our absolute Reliance on water it's a resource that can't be replaced which is why it's so

02:36imperative we protect it let's take a quick look at different ways we use water we all need drinking water a human can go weeks without food but only days without water and we don't just need water to survive we need clean water drinking water accounts for a tiny percentage of our overall water usage less than 1% but it's one of the most important of all the uses we also need water that works for us

03:03doing the dirty household jobs like laundry and cleaning for growing gardens and keeping Lawns green Beyond household chores are the heavy duty jobs in Industry water is used in many manufacturing processes as an ingredient in food production as a coolant for producing steel and power as the driving force in hydroelectric generation the list goes on and on one of water's biggest jobs is

03:29helping to feed the world water is essential to agriculture without it Farmers couldn't grow crops or produce livestock Beyond its use in the production of goods water is often used to transport those goods to Market waterways are integral to National and worldwide shipping when water's not working it's playing one of its most popular uses is for recreation whether it's swimming water

03:55skiing fishing the water's got to be clean polluted recreational Waters spell trouble for both humans and Wildlife which brings us to the final use habitat for wildlife rivers lakes and oceans support entire diverse and fragile ecosystems ecosystems that can be shattered by even the smallest changes in water's quality we depend so heavily on water

04:22isn't it ironic that many of the ways we use it are actually impairing its quality careless industrial use of water can contaminate the resource with toxic chemicals recreational boats and Jet Skis can dump gas and oil into the very water we want to enjoy if the ways we use water were the only practices creating pollution problems the puzzle would be solved we just change the ways we use water but it's not that simple a

04:49whole range of practices the individual actions we take and decisions we make affect water quality we all live Downstream of someone else and um there's someone else that lives Downstream of us that needs to utilize that water so it's important to um be careful at how how you use the Watershed and the land in that area and what you might be introducing into that water body one person's decision to properly

05:16dispose of paint keeps that paint out of a stream one developer's decision to control erosion keeps sediment out of a river multiply those individual decisions across an entire community and you can see the impact proper practices can have practices are closely tied to the centerpiece of this whole water quality puzzle pollutants some water pollutants are

05:41easy to see like garbage but the most serious pollution problems aren't as obvious sediment nutrients chemicals pathogens sediment is simply soil it's a valuable resource in a farm field or along a stream bank but it becomes a major problem when it's was was into waterways at the root of the problem is erosion erosion off a farm Fields uh construction sites where you don't have

06:08proper um sediment control structures in place you can easily have sediment eroded off of those landscape areas you can have pasture areas that are overg grazed um animal access cattle access directly to streams with all the trampling along a stream Corridor that exposes bare ground which in turn um exposes sediment to erosion and then along all of our major rivers um if you don't have a lot of um vegetation sort

06:35of holding the soil in place stream Banks can be a major source of sediment Why is soil so damaging when it's in water it affects everything from the way water looks to what can live in it sediment can block sunlight influencing what types of vegetation and species can thrive in that water sediment fills in waterways affecting transportation and Recreation and sediment can be a carry for other pollutants like toxic

07:01chemicals which attach to the sediment making it a double threat next are nutrients which pose an entirely different problem nitrogen and phosphorus are natural components of manure human sewage and decaying organic matter like leaves they're also present in manufactured fertilizers nutrients are applied to farm fields to feed crops and to backyard gardens they're used to Green up golf courses and Lawns they become a

07:29problem when precipitation washes nutrients off the land and into waterways once they're in water they do what they do on land enhance plant growth when we have too much nitrogen in the water your water tends to turn green and you get a lot of algae blooms when those algae blooms finally die and the algae start to decompose um they take up all the oxygen in the water and so there's a low amount of oxygen in the water which causes

07:55problems for fish and plants because they need that oxygen nutrients aren't just damaging to watery ecosystems they also pose a real risk to humans nitrates a byproduct of nitrogen are especially dangerous when we have too much nitrogen um in drinking water for instance um babies maybe infants under 6 months of age can develop something called blue baby syndrome and what that is is their blood can't carry enough oxygen and um

08:23that can cause some health problems and in fact we may have older people or people who are in um poor health that can also have that problem the risk is so serious that the Environmental Protection Agency EPA tightly regulates the levels allowed in drinking water chemicals are another class of pollutants some chemicals commonly used in manufacturing Mercury pcbs lead are toxic to the environment and humans when they reach certain levels because of the

08:51health risks these chemicals pose the EPA carefully regulates Industrial Waste special permits govern the disposal of toxic chemicals but spills accidents and improper disposal mean they still get into waterways the problem isn't just industrial either think of the toxins around your own house cleaners paint thinners pesticides oil improper disposal of just 1 gallon of oil can

09:18impair 250,000 gallons of water about the amount of water in this pool agriculture also relies heavily on chemicals like herbicides and pesticides their application needs to be carefully controlled to prevent contamination of water the list of chemicals we use every day has grown faster than our knowledge of how they interact with the environment emerging contaminants a buzzword in water circles looks at

09:44chemicals not traditionally track like caffeine over-the-counter drugs antibiotics and disinfectants a study completed by the United States Geological Survey found levels of many of these contaminants in streams across the United States now now the real work begins to see what if any effects these chemicals have on water quality pathogens are probably the most serious threat to our health pathogens

10:10are disease causing bacteria and viruses they can come from Human sewage or raw animal waste if pathogens contaminate water and aren't eliminated during treatment the tiny organisms can kill one of the real risks that anybody faces who treats water either to drink or as we do to make in a condition that can be returned to the river so fish and wildlife can use it and so other people

10:36can drink it is killing certain kinds of viral infections or bacteria cryptosporidium is a a virus that appeared in the milwa water system about 10 years ago now and killed a number of people up there the stakes don't get much higher than that knowing what's getting into the water is important but it isn't enough the next piece of the puzzle is understanding how it's getting in the water the basic hydrology or water cycle

11:04that picks up these pollutants and moves them into waterways a water cycle hydrologic cycle is the process by which water is transported from the land surface into the atmosphere and then back down to the land surface and what happens to water when it reaches the land surface there are a number of different Pathways that it can um follow you have precipitation that falls to the land surface either as rain uh snow snow

11:29or ice um you can have some evaporation or water that heads back up into the atmosphere um you can have some infiltration into the shallow subsurface where it replenishes soil moisture um plants can uptake the water at that point um transpiration can occur where the water um is released through the stems and leaves of plants back into the atmosphere um some of the water can run

11:53off the landscape to a nearby water body be it a stream uh River Pond what are Wetland area and then there's some infiltration that occurs deeper um into the subsurface and replenishes um our groundwater resources during any or all of those steps in the cycle water can come into contact with pollutants they get picked up and washed into waterways as important as the cycle

12:19itself are ways we've interfered with it the modifications we've made over time to the land's natural hydrology these changes give pollutants a straight shot into water hydrology or how water moves across the landscape um through the underlying deposits has really changed through time if we take rural areas for example um so many acres in Iowa have been tiled and what tiling does is you're inserting tiles 3 to 4 feet

12:46beneath the ground surface and what that does is it drains the landscape and then funnels the water directly to a nearby stream um so it's speeding up the movement of water um off the land surface into a nearby stream these agricultural modifications essentially short circuit or sidestep Nature's intended plumbing system that includes Wetlands vegetation and soil these natural filters slow down water's

13:13movement allowing more time for pollutant to filter out of the water it's not just agricultural modifications that shortcircuit the system urban areas with Acres of concrete steel and asphalt do the same thing in a different way I believe we now have uh what I call a runoff driven hydrology so when rain now falls on a roof on a asphalt parking lot on a