Groundwater management is a growing concern throughout the country. At least half of the people in the United States have groundwater as their source for drinking water. Of the available fresh water resources in this country, 95% of it comes from groundwater.
How should this country protect the groundwater?
People cannot survive without water to drink. More and more you hear of serious environmental concerns relating to global warming, shortages of water, air and water pollution are among several concerns in this country today. All of these issues are serious. Lawmakers have begun to pass legislation that is meant to protect the environment and one of these areas is water.
Regarding the area of groundwater management and protecting the fresh water, there have been laws passed to restrict the use of certain chemicals in farming and industrial use. These chemicals when applied to the ground, then run off when rain falls or the chemicals blow off into the nearby lakes, streams and rivers and thereby contaminating the groundwater.
Another source of water contamination happens when industrial waste is dumped into water bodies which then pollutes the usable water supply. It has been found that 70% of industrial waste is disposed of in this manner. Chemical spills occur approximately 16,000 times each year, often as chemicals are transferred from and into trucks, trains and/or storage tanks. If these spills are not cleaned up sufficiently to prevent run off, soaking into the ground or other forms of pollution, the chemicals eventually end up in the groundwater.
This is why groundwater management is so important!
Industrial wastewater treatment, groundwater remediation technologies and systems, waste water treatment systems are all important and used in groundwater management to prevent pollution, clean up spills and water used in industrial setting and find ways to clean up water either before it enters the groundwater system or as it is being pumped up from the well or aquifer system and before it is consumed by the people.
In the groundwater management field, more technology is being developed all the time – to test the water and the process to find out more about how the contamination is occurring in the first place and hopefully prevent it in the future as well as development of remediation equipment and remediation projects that will clean the groundwater and make it available for drinking, cooking and cleansing.
Some contamination in the groundwater has been there for many years. The ice age and glaciers formed the mountains, rivers and valleys. In some cases, those formations account for the chemicals and nutrients in the groundwater. You may see a neighborhood with private wells where nitrates are excessively high, possibly even to unsafe limits, while another neighborhood close by have no or very little nitrate level in the groundwater. A significant number of tested wells contain above the minimum reporting limit set in a government survey of one or more pesticides. This occurred in approximately 14.6% of tested wells.
In the environmental remediation process and groundwater management overall, project leaders must find out and understand the source and process of any contamination in order to successfully deal with the issue and advise citizens of how to acquire and maintain a safe drinking water and fresh water supply.
If you are not sure of the quality of your own drinking water, you can get and install a drinking water treatment system. These sometimes go right below your kitchen sink and connect to a separate drinking faucet or you can have them installed with your other mechanicals and routed to your drinking faucet. It is also possible to perhaps filter water through your refrigerator drinking water spout.
Is it safe to drink water from your private well or within your city? Should you use water to irrigate your lawn? What are safe levels or nitrates or other chemicals in your water?These and many other questions can be answered by a groundwater management professional. Check with your city or government environmental program. Check the statistics and do the research regarding your water – where it comes from, is there an adequate supply, what you can do to protect your water for yourself and for future generations.