After reading the following news items, I’m thinking that investing in companies that make top-notch and easy-to-maintain water filtration equipment might be a good idea.
Earlier this week Environmental Health News reported on widespread contamination of private wells with naturally occurring elements like arsenic and manganese. In its first-ever effort to track two dozen elements, the U.S. Geological Society discovered that "13 percent of untreated drinking water contains at least one element at a concentration that exceeds federal health regulations or guidelines. That rate far outpaces other contaminants in well water, including industrial chemicals and pesticides." For public water systems, the presence of these elements is less concerning, since utilities test for and remove those for which the feds have set standards. But the 60 million Americans who rely on private wells are on their own: a good reason to expand the list of contaminants you ask your local lab to test for -- annually. Read the USGS report and peruse its element maps here. Contact your state drinking-water program to find a state or EPA-certified lab to test your well water (and then buy the appropriate filter if the results don’t please you).
On the other side of the world, the island groups of Tuvalu and Tokelau have declared water emergencies. La Nina weather patterns have reduced rainfall, and what groundwater remains has turned brackish from rising sea levels. (Tuvalu, you may recall, was the first nation to formulate a climate-change evacuation plan.) Citizens are rationing water, says the Washington Post, crops are wilting, and fruit trees, a major food source, are suffering. Portable desalination plants have been ordered. Meanwhile, residents are drinking bottled water.
In California, water managers desperate for new sources of supply are contemplating... Superfund sites! According to the Whittier Daily News, the Walnut Valley Water District is considering buying water pumped and treated from polluted areas of the San Gabriel Basin. "Parts of the basin have been polluted with perchlorate and other contaminants leaked by the aerospace and defense industries that used to dominate the region, resulting in one of the nation's biggest Superfund sites." Other U.S. cities are already purifying sewage effluent and the brackish water that occurs thousands of feet below freshwater aquifers. How do they clean the water? With ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis, which removes the vast majority of things that should worry us. (Filtration plus reverse osmosis is the method used by Aquafina, Dasani, Nestle Pure Life, and other major bottled-water brands to further "purify" tap water that already meets federal drinking-water standards.)
Unfortunately, reverse osmosis is expensive, it uses a great deal of energy, and it produces a lot of waste in the form of brine (or worse, in the case of that California Superfund site). It’s all well and good to agitate for better watershed protection and tighter controls of discharges to surface and groundwater, but faced with naturally occurring, harmful elements, and saltwater intrusion, and limited quantities of fresh water for growing populations, I'm afraid that filtering will be a big part of our future.
Photo via Irving Rusinow/National Archives
