What's in Your Water?

Grade Level: 7-12

Subject: Health/Science

During the recent 2008 annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, leaders in government, business, and civil society came together for talk and action. Hollywood actor Matt Damon also participated in the conference as part of his commitment to the Global Water Challenge, which helps provide sanitary and clean drinking water to the world's poorest populations. Damon co-founded the H2O Africa Foundation, which spreads public awareness about the continent's water crisis and gathers support for clean water projects there.

In more developed parts of Africa and other parts of the world, today's clean drinking water is taken for granted. This has not always been the case, however. In the United States, for example, the Clean Water Act was passed just a little over 30 years ago, in 1972. This law was created because severe health problems that are linked to polluted drinking water—including stomach illness, anemia, and irreversible damage to the nervous system—had become a huge concern. Too often, bacteria or toxic chemicals were discovered in people's water. This problem was caused by too many contaminants getting into the water supply and not enough effort spent on treating the water prior to public consumption.

The Clean Water Act, along with the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, has allowed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to give out about $80 million in wastewater treatment assistance across the United States. These efforts have helped get nearly 80 million more citizens connected to modern sewage treatment facilities than were connected in 1968. The proportion of reported disease outbreaks that can be attributed to problems at public water treatment systems has steadily declined, from 73% in 1989-1990 to 30% in 1995-1996.

Still, as recently as 1998, close to 1,000 community drinking water supply systems (affecting about 18 million people) violated the EPA's Surface Water Treatment Rule. The rule was aimed at guarding against viruses, as well as a microorganism known as giardia, in drinking water supplies. Furthermore, between 1999 and 2001, four of five wastewater treatment plants and chemical and industrial facilities in the United States polluted waterways beyond what their federal permits allowed.

During this week's lesson, you will learn how to use some interactive tools to investigate both protectors and potential polluters of your drinking water. You will also find out how the EPA watches over the public's drinking water supply, which includes regulating how much pollution wastewater facilities and other industries can release into local watersheds.

Before you dive into this lesson, get a printed map of your area's watershed, if possible. The map should include the watershed's boundary, primary bodies of water, major cities (including where you live), and counties.

Keeping Tabs on Your Water

Where a community gets its drinking water—from groundwater, surface water, or a combination of both—varies from place to place. Regardless of a community's water source, however, commercial operations that might pollute these supplies—from farms to energy production plants to car repair shops—must all get a water discharge permit from the EPA. These permits help track commercial operations and enforce their compliance with regulations, including those outlined by the Clean Water Act. Although these industries are allowed to release certain chemicals or other potentially hazardous materials, they are only permitted to discharge a certain quantity and certain concentrations of each chemical.

Begin your investigation at the EPA's Office of Groundwater & Drinking Water page What contaminants may be found in drinking water? Read the introduction, and then click on the list of contaminants the EPA regulates. If possible, print the PDF of the same list as a handy reference. As you review the list of the six categories of contaminants—Microorganisms, Disinfection Byproducts, Disinfectants, Inorganic Chemicals, Organic Chemicals, and Radionuclides—group each individual contaminant by what type of facility or operation is usually responsible for discharging it. A few may be discharged naturally, but most come from human activity. Which, if any, of these contaminants might be a pollution source in your local watershed?

To learn more about each of these contaminants, also review the information of each contaminant the EPA regulates page. What kinds of health problems can each contaminant cause?

Next, visit the EPA's Envirofacts Web site and enter the data warehouse for Water. For this exercise, you may want to coordinate with classmates so that each of you, or teams of you, researches a different county in your watershed. Under the question "What public water systems for my county have violations reported in Envirofacts?" type in the name of a county that lies within your watershed, along with your state's two-letter abbreviation. Click to find out about what has happened in your chosen county.

Your search results gives you a list of violators. Click the name of each entity to investigate the details of the violation. The details may include a specific contaminant based on sampling, or they may identify the violation as a "Consumer Confidence Rule," which usually means that the entity has not provided adequate sampling and reporting to the EPA.

Review the details of each violation. Record the entity's name, contaminant type, the primary water source type (groundwater or surface water), and date range of occurrence, as well as date of response and compliance. With classmates, list the contaminant violations by year that were reported over the last five years or more. Have there been any years that consumers may have been at higher risk than others because of compounding violations?

If you have time, you can also use the Envirofacts Data Warehouse for Water form for finding out "What companies have been issued permits to discharge waste water into rivers" in your area of interest.

Check the Scores

To get a more comprehensive look at water pollution in your state, check out the Environmental Defense Fund's Scorecard. Choose the Clean Water Act Status section, and then click on your state. Review the information for your area. You can also "Zip to your community" using a zip code at the bottom of the left-hand menu. Compare scorecard data with that of a different zip code or state.

It is also important to read About the Scorecard, including the page explaining the Caveats on the Water Quality data, which basically explains why Scorecard analysis is somewhat limited in its accuracy and completeness.

Newspaper Activities

Browse current issues of The Sacramento Bee for one article or photograph related to the water in your area. How are people using the water—drinking it, using it for industrial production, or enjoying it for recreation? Choosing one type of contaminant that discharged within your local watershed within the last five years, imagine a scenario in which the discharge was much worse. Assume that the violation was immediately recognized and that the community's water quality was severely affected. How would the article or photograph have been different if it was written or snapped during this high-pollution scenario? Edit the article as if you were the reporter whose job it was to include the discharge news. If using a photograph, create a new illustration that mirrors the photo, but modify it based on the scenario. For example, if children had been splashing in a local park's fountain in the original, have no children splashing in the scenario. In addition, make a list of other possible consequences of this scenario. Share and discuss your scenario changes and list with classmates.