The Pollution of Surface Water Resources essay

Water is an amazing chemical substance with unique properties that affect life on earth. Despite the fact that more than 70 percent of earth surface is water-covered, the major part of it is not suitable for usage. And only a tiny fraction of the planet’s abundant water supply – about 0.024 percent is readily available to us as liquid freshwater in accessible groundwater deposits and in lakes, rivers, and streams. The rest of it is stored in the salty oceans, frozen in polar ice caps, or is deep underground and therefore is considered to be hard-to-reach. Moreover, the environmental scientific data (Kaushik, A., Kaushik, C.P., Botkin, D. B., Keller, E.A., Miller, G. T., Jr, Spoolman, S. Williams, L. D.) approved that the quantity of fresh water in the whole world is constantly decreasing and one of the main reason of such a change is the pollution of water resources. This work aims to formulate a plan for this environmental problem, provide detailed description of water pollution, describe non-living and living factors that contribute to or are affected by the problem, determine positive or negative human effects, make an evaluation of current sustainability strategies and solutions, benefits and challenges of issue and also reflect the required government, societal and global support.  Thus we emphasize on the danger of this environmental problem and suggest the ways out.

To begin with it should be defined that water pollution is any chemical, biological, or physical change in water quality that harms living organisms or makes water unsuitable for desired use in its natural state. (Anubha Kaushik, C.P. Kaushik, 2004) Such a kind of pollution can be caused by the sudden or ongoing, accidental or deliberate, discharge of a polluting material. It is a common knowledge that water is an essential commodity for survival, as it belongs to the integral things of our everyday life, so the pollution of water is recognized nowadays to be a great environmental problem.

There are many factors that contribute to the problem of water pollution, but according to the scientific opinion the key one is the human factor, as  all segments of society including urban, rural, industrial, agricultural, military and others are the potential contributors to the problem of the pollution of water resources. Rates of population growth can be singled out in particular as increasing quantity of people often results in the introduction of more pollutants into the environment as well as greater demands on finite water resources. If to speak about the things that are affected by this environmental problem it becomes difficult to single out the main one as everything beginning from a human being to  a plant or a bacteria can feel the harmful effect of polluted water and the lack of fresh one.

It is known that any pollutants can be transported by air or deposited in bodies of water, but more often the pollution occurs when pollutants leak into surface water or groundwater. Pollution of surface water occurs when too much of harmful substance flows into a body of water, when the natural ability of water to remove and dilute pollutants vanishes.

So what are the main sources of water pollution? Williams as well as other environmental scientists emphasizes on the three major sources of this kind of environmental problem that are municipal, industrial, and agricultural. (Williams, 2005) These sources have been categorized and divided into two large groups: point (single) and nonpoint (large and dispersed) sources. Point sources are specific sites near water which directly discharge pollutants at particular locations through drain pipes, ditches, or sewer lines into bodies of water. Major point sources of water pollution are industries, sewage treatment plants, underground coal mines, offshore oil wells etc. In general, point source pollutants are easy to identify, monitor, and regulate through on-site treatment or disposal and also by permit as they are located at exact places.

Nonpoint sources are scattered, diffused and intermittent and pollute water individually or collectively. They are usually influenced by factors such as landuse, hydrology, topography, climate, native vegetation,and geology and cannot be traced to any single site of discharge. Examples vary and are not limited to runoff of chemicals and sediments into surface water from cropland, livestock feedlots, logged forests, urban streets, lawns, and golf courses, overflowing small drains, atmospheric deposition etc. The pollution of water resources in rural areas are generally associated with agriculture, mining, or forestry. Agricultural sphere takes a leading place in causing pollution of water resources. In the scientists view, sediment eroded from agricultural lands is one of the main source . Other major agricultural pollutants also include fertilizers, pesticides, bacteria from livestock and food processing wastes, and excess salt from soils of irrigated cropland. Speaking about industrial pollutants, it should be admitted that they include not only a variety of harmful organic chemicals, but also the chemicals of inorganic nature. The third biggest source in the group of nonpoint sources  is mining industry. The pollutants that it produces include runoff of toxic chemicals, sediments and so on. Another great contributor to the pollution of water resources is climate change from global warming. The warmer weather can be the reason of precipitation change in different areas and some of them would get a lot of them, the rest would get none. Intense downpours could flush more harmful chemicals, plant nutrients, and microorganisms into water resources. Prolonged drought could reduce river flows that dilute waste. (Daniel B. Botkin, Edward A. Keller, 2010) The most important thing that it is almost impossible to monitor and control water pollution from nonpoint sources because of their scattered nature and  high level of expenses on such kind of operations.

As regards the pollution of surface water resources, we can single out several particular sources and among them are: sewage (which is severe in cities); industrial effluents (containing toxic chemicals, acids, alkalis, metallic salts, phenols, cyanides, ammonia, radioactive substances, etc.); synthetic detergents (which are used in washing and cleaning and produce foam); agrochemicals (fertilizers (containing nitrates and phosphates) and pesticides (insecticides, fungicides, herbicides etc.); oil (oil spillage into sea-water during drilling and shipment); waste heat (which increases the temperature of water bodies and affects distribution and survival of sensitive species). (Anubha Kaushik, C.P. Kaushik, 2004)

There are two basic documents that control pollution of the United States surface waters: The Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972  and the 1987 Water Quality Act. The Clean Water Act sets standards for allowed levels of key water pollutants and requires polluters to get permits limiting how much of various pollutants they can discharge into aquatic systems. According to the EPA, the Clean Water Act of 1972 led to numerous improvements in U.S. water quality and among them:

• The number of Americans served by community water systems that met federal health standards increased from 79% to 94%.
• The percentage of U.S. stream lengths found to be fishable and swimmable increased from 36% to 60% of those tested.
• The amount of topsoil lost through agricultural runoff was cut by about 1.1 billion metric tons
• The proportion of the U.S. population served by sewage treatment plants increased from 32% to74%.
• Annual wetland losses decreased by 80%.

These  impressive achievements come along with deplorable facts. In 2006, the EPA found that 45% of the country’s lakes and 40% of the streams surveyed were still too polluted for swimming or fishing, and runoff of animal wastes from hog, poultry, and cattle feedlots and meat processing facilities had polluted 7 of every 10 U.S. rivers. Livestock wastes are stored in lagoons that sometimes leak and can overflow or rupture as a result of excessive rainfall. They can spill their contents into nearby streams and rivers and sometimes into residential areas. The world experience also provides unfavourable data. According to a 2003 report by the World Commission on Water in the 21st Century, half of the world’s 500 rivers are heavily polluted, most of them running through developing countries. Most of these countries cannot afford to build waste treatment plants and do not have, or do not enforce, laws for controlling water pollution. (G. Tyler Miller, Jr, Scoot Spoolman, 2008)

Speaking of solutions, science gives us many practical ways to reduce and prevent water pollution, among them we can single out the following: reduce nonpoint runoff; reuse treated wastewater for irrigation; find substitutes for toxic pollutants; work with nature to treat sewage; practice the following scheme – refuse, reduce,recycle, reuse; reduce air pollution; reduce poverty; slow population growth.

So, to sum it up, much more study is needed on the effects of water pollution to help understanding this environmental problem, as polluting our water resources endangers people and ecosystems and the main task of society for today is to prevent it.