Four More Threats To Our Water Supply
Dec 31st, 2012 | By Andrew | Category: Food, Top Headline, Water | Print This Article
Many of us wake up in the morning, pour a glass of water or fix a cup of coffee, and do not give a second thought to where that water came from. For those of us who choose to live off the grid, we have developed a particular appreciation for the simple things that we utilize each day. There are substantial risks posed to our water supply, and it is of utmost importance that we consider the very real dangers that could limit or contaminate our nation’s water supply.
Natural Limitations Of The Water Supply
Some of the present problems with our water supply are composition based: with only so much freshwater available, we have a limited base supply of water to work with. Should portions of that freshwater supply suffer from any natural disasters or mal-interference, entire countries and populations would suffer from severe and potentially fatal water shortages.
Approximately 75 percent of available freshwater exists in the form of polar ice caps, meaning the general public cannot access it. In some areas, there already exists substantial conflict over access to water, and not just in countries that fight wars over limited water resources, like Egypt and neighboring countries. Nevada, a sparse climate with limited water resources, routinely fights over the direction of water pipelines, attempting to increase their access to water resources. The more our population grows, the direr the situation grows.
Natural Gas Drilling
As natural gas drilling increases, the amount of life-threatening toxins in our water increases as well. Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is a method to retrieve natural gas that pumps dangerous chemicals into our water supplies. Recent reports show that nobody seems to know what chemicals are used in the process, despite the fact that gasses and chemicals are being released into our groundwater. EPA officials admit that they are not privy to the chemical compounds that companies are using in this process. The government has openly admitted that they declared a process safe in 2004 without having any idea which chemicals were being used and which chemicals we are being exposed to. Even the initial EPA report that declared the process safe noted that fracking “can cause kidney, liver, heart, blood, and brain damage through prolonged or repeated exposure.” We should be holding the government agency responsible for safe water and air for our children to a higher standard: writing a process off as potentially life threatening while approving it for continued use is unacceptable.
Pollution
Huge corporations throughout America operate with less-than-stellar business practices: that is no surprise to anyone. Anyone who has seen Erin Brockovich has a pretty solid idea of the problem occurring throughout the United States. Every company that drills into the ground presents a threat to sustaining a clean water supply throughout the country, and then they compound the threat they create by dumping chemical waste and other garbage into our water supply. Even companies that bury their waste in the ground have the potential to contaminate our water supplies, as that waste can seep into underground water resources that flow into our rivers and lakes.
Our water transportation infrastructure is not the only outdated system in the U.S., however. Sewage systems also leak every day. While water leakages simply decrease the amount of available water, sewer leaks poison and contaminate much of the water that is available. The Clean Water Act should have fixed this problem, but over 40 percent of our rivers and lakes still are not safe to swim or fish in. If we cannot even swim in these bodies of water, do we want to ingest them?
It would be almost impossible to pinpoint the origin of every toxin that our water supply has been exposed to, and that should be scary enough in and of itself. What we can do is push companies to transition to safer disposal processes of chemical (and ordinary) waste. Those companies can no longer be allowed to put the lives of millions of people at risk every single day in order to utilize a more convenient and potentially cheaper disposal method.
Outdated Infrastructure
Water shortage problems are inevitable in many communities, simply because of geographical proximity to water supplies. How much are these natural water shortages worsened by inefficient water infrastructure, leaking water each day? Reports show that water infrastructure in the United States currently leaks seven billion gallons of water every day. In a country with limited water resources, we cannot afford to exacerbate the water crisis by using infrastructure so outdated that it would cost more than $300 billion to fix. The water supplies we do have would go much farther if we properly utilized every gallon available to us. While it will be initially expensive, the country as a whole would save billions of dollars every year afterwards if we got all of the water possible out of our natural supplies, rather than being forced to scrounge for water as we lose tons of it each day.
Moving Forward
What is most troubling is that it is almost impossible to know when your water supply is going to be affected by one of the risk factors above. Water leakages happen everywhere, driving up the cost of water and making it less available. We have no way of knowing when contaminated water will enter our homes, putting ourselves and our families at risk.
Moving forward, communities have to push for outdated water infrastructure to be replaced. The government will not wake up one morning and decide to replace a system that will cost billions of dollars: they will have to be persuaded. Building a consensus in our communities that we will no longer allow our water to be wasted and contaminated is one of the most crucial steps we can take.
Make sure that your family is using a top-notch filtration system and purifying all of the water you use to avoid any interaction with dangerous chemicals that can be found in water throughout the country. There is a lot more at risk than water that tastes poorly: the health of your family is at risk.
©2013 Off The Grid News
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The FDA has declared that water is drug used to cure dehydration and will be regulated starting with bottled water
Hi Andrew,
Very comprehensive article. However, I want to take issue with your second from last paragraph where you indicate the “government” replace the water infrastructure. In PA, most of our suburban counties’ water companies are privately owned. Mine, which is Aqua America, is an excellent provider and is constantly replacing old piping and filtration plants. The government is not the source. Many of their regulations are onerous, redundant and cost prohibitive. Consider, Lisa Jackson, EPA head, resigned because of her non-transparency and variety of coverups. No one should trust the government to do better than a private sector company that is open to its users and stockholders. As an Off The Grid reader, I have been well rewarded by most of the information this site has provided. Less government dependency and more self-sufficiency is the basis here. I have my own back-up filtration unit as well as a “Life Straw” for traveling. As you have noted above, preparation is the key.
THE STEEL MILLS ALONG LAKE MICHIGAN ARE ALLOWED(BY THE EPA) TO DEEP WELL INJECT STEEL
PROCESSING FLUIDS,LIKE FROM THE PICKLE LINE..THIS IS DONE ON THE SHORES OF ONE OF THE LARGEST SOURCES OF FRESH WATER IN THE WORLD.THIS IS DONE LEGALLY,JUST THINK OF WHAT
THEY MOST LIKELY DO ILLEGALLY..
ANOTHER EXAMPLE THE EPA AND THE COKE OVENS,THE EPA LETS THEM KNOW WHEN THEY ARE COMING TO MONITOR,THEN THE PEOPLE AT THE COKE OVENS RUN THE OVEN LEVEL AT THE PROPER FILL TO ALLOW THE POLLUTION CONTROL TO WORK,AND THIS ISN’T REAL HARD TO GUESS BUT AS SONE AS THE EPA LEAVES THE LEVELS GO BACK UP BLOCKING OFF THE POLLUTION CONTROL AND ALLOWING MORE PROFIT TO COME OUT OF EACH OVEN!ALL THE EPA HAS TO DUE IS GO IN AND ASK THE SEE THE PRODUCTION LEVELS FOR ANY GIVEN DAY,BUT THAT WOULD TAKE SOMEONE WITH A BRAIN,OR NOT BE IN “BED” WITH BIG BUSINESS!
THIS IS ANOTHER FUN FACT THE ONE THAT PROFITS THE MOST IS “ARCELORMITAL” AND THEY SEND ALL THE LARGE PROFITS OVERSEAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I KNOW THESE THINGS AND ALOT MORE BECAUSE I WORKED THERE IN SUPERVISION FOR 30 YEARS!!!!!!AND THIS IS ONLY A SMALL PART OF WHAT GOES ON,SO GO AHEAD AND BELIEVE YOU CAN TRUST THE GOVERNMENT AND BIG BUSINESS,THE ONLY ONE I TRUST IS MYSELF AND I’M PRE-
PARED FOR WHATS COMING!!!ARE YOU?????
Seems like no one can be trusted. Big business will do anything for profit. Government looks the other way. Self sufficiency is needed, but a healthy society needs to be able to trust each other. Where’s the balance?
Is there any surprise here? For years the right has demanded and gotten away with fewer and weaker environmental laws and now this same RIGHT WING complains about the EPA and other agencies NOT doing their job. What the hell do you expect when every wacko who isn’t imagining conspiracies involving the Government in 911 or the killing of JFK is demanding LESS government interference in our lives? Hey , ya’ got what ya’ wanted, eh!! Now stop your damn complaining and be grateful in LESS Government interference .
The government is no help, they come up with rules that do not work. The best thing you can do is ignore government regulations. we do not need the government taking control of our wells. If the government doesnot know you have a well,don’t tell them..
we had very good water until someone asked the State government how deep our well was, the government made us send water samples in, taken from differnt points. then clamed our water was bad. We took one set of samples from the same place and they came up with one bad sample. Wehad checked our water supply yearly always good. the government finally made us chorinate our water, our water is now awful. We could have found out how deep our well was by droping a plum line down. the well.
The EPA should be abolished. what good have thy done? ( the government did not know we had a well, until we told them.
@rainintheface
“Hey , ya’ got what ya’ wanted, eh!! Now stop your damn complaining and be grateful in LESS Government interference .”
WHAT?! Less government interference?! Are you kidding? Where have you been living for the past 10+ years? The government has been highly successful in their quest toward engineering every facet of our lives. Wake up! And stop looking around for a right-wing person to blame – go take a look in the mirror.
As far as I can see, we are in a cycle of wage depression which will force further decreased regulation, because buyers won’t be able to pay for thier costs. I am appalled that people who cry”Drill Baby, Drill” complain about fracking chemicals in thier water. At my NY State farm, my neighbors wells deliver water loaded with burning natural gas; since we are not yet fracking for gas in NY (we do frack for water), I can only attribute it to PA fracking. We are all connected, and the sooner we learn that, the better off. There is absolutely NO WAY any ine of us can stand alone. Even in ancient times, there were trade routes for people to get what they needed lig distance. Mecat, your filtration sysyems are only good for a short time; when the inevitable happens you will be drinking dirty water as soon as your filters are used up, assuming you survive that long. I don’t trust any business who survives by separating me from my money, and I can’t trust any government who’s laws are basically
For Sale. All I know is,’waste not, want not’ and ‘don’t shit where you eat.’ Everyone should be concerned with clean environments.
We have natural gas coming off of some of the artesian type wells in Colorado. Have been gassing off for decades. Has nothing to do with fracking. It is just natural.
Water wells are shallow, fracking is very deep. Thousands of feet of rock separate the two.
Drilling a well straight down is fine but fracking thousands of feet below the surface somehow
is causing problems?
Rainintheface: the Rightwing complains about an EPA that OVER_REGULATES! Carbon dioxide
that you exhale is a pollutant. Excess rain is a pollutant. The EPA just issued over 70 new regulations.
Are they really required? Or are they just consolidating power to interfere with *everything you do*?
Silkee:
I challenge the idea that fracking in Pennsylvania affects water hundreds of miles away in New York!
Unless you are on adjoining property on both sides of the state line, that is simply ridiculous.
Four who graduated high school with me in Michigan in 1973 were already working in oil and gas exploration and did so for several more years. They say that hundreds or thousands of oil and gas wells were drilled, capped and still not used. One moved to Florida and reports the same there. Callers to coast to coast am from Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri and others have report the same. A caller to another show said he was traveling to Texas through Oklahoma or Kansas and saw a hundred new wells along the highway. He talked to an oil worker at a restaurant who was upset that he had been told to keep quiet about the new wells.
Two callers to Hannity when he was off reported a few years ago reported that oil and gas wells are already drilled and capped at Alaska’s north slope. Lindsey Williams, “The Pipeline Padre” was present in the 1970′s when oil was discovered at Gull Island, Alaska. Well head pressure then was 1500 psi and the oil was supposed to run dry in twenty years. 35 years later, head pressure is still at 1500 psi. Williams says that 47- 747 Jet Engines force natural gas back into underground reservoirs each day at a trillion (billion?) cubic feet.
The pipeline carriers were built for three pipes. Only one line was ever built. New routes are not needed. Williams says that one more line of oil and one more of gas would bring gasoline down to $1.50 in 18 months. Governor Palin was having a new natural gas line built and run to the lower 48 states. That was before the republican establishment derailed and undermined her. Neither democrats or republicans want us to know the truth.
Misinformation claims that Alaska is drying up, that the existing line runs only a third full. Limbaugh must have gotten word that all the oil we’ll need for the next 3-400 years has already been drilled and capped and has been led to believe that gasoline cannot be produced at a profit for sale below $5 per gallon and blames environmentalists. So fracking is the answer? Nonsense!
But environmentalism IS one of the weapons being used to redistribute America’s wealth to any autocrat in the United Nations dictators club. It is also true that most progressive “environmentalists” believe without knowing – like a religion.
In 2007, Russia drilled the first “super deep” well in Siberia at 40,230 feet deep. That summer, wherever they drilled in Siberia and the Arctic, they found oil – so much that they can’t reasonably estimate how much is there. This must be part of the same reserves discovered in Alaska in the late 1970′s.
In 1977, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger tried to cede the continental shelf areas around Siberia and Alaska that were part of The Alaska Purchase, to the U.S.S.R.. Secretary of State James Baker tried this also. They were both stopped by the fact that only the U.S. Senate can cede U.S territory by treaty – which would have made the American public aware. Since then, operational control of these natural resource areas has been ceded to the Soviet Union and now Russia. Once again a U.S. President is trying to formally cede these areas with the claim that they belong to no one. Really? Part of the earth has never been claimed?
And let’s not forget Congressman Larry McDonald who died when the Soviet Union shot down Korean Air Lines KAL flight 007 (in 1981?) He was reportedly going to expose the treasonous complicity of then Secretary Kissinger.
It should be no surprise that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner grew up in China where his father and Henry Kissinger have been coaching them on how to defeat the U.S. economically for decades.
Somehow the private property rights of trans-national oil companies trump eminent domain in favor of the American economy. Oil from American soil must be provided to the world market so America can compete with China on a level playing field. Why not? American workers must compete with Chinese (and third world) workers earning less than $2 per hour. Dianne Feinstein’s husband earns many $millions from Chinese trade and the legislation she votes on. Is she toeing the line for her masters and the U.N. who plan to dominate us further?
And speaking of trump, where’s Donald?
LOVED your comment! Very interesting. Thanks for such great reporting. In our area in NY we know a guy who just got out of the business of drilling wells. He said now the government makes them GPS every well they dig. That is crazy! Why do they want to know that! It’s none of their business!
I see plenty of political innuendo with a shortage of facts thereby informing much less than inflaming. Shame on Off The Grid News for printing this junk. I expect much better than what I see in this article.
Lets take a look at the section above, Natural Gas Fracking, for example. Hydraulic fracturing as an extraction technique is becoming more widely used to access crude oil in petroleum fields, not just natural gas. Certain chemicals are used – in particular; ‘scale inhibitors’ to protect metal surfaces of machinery used and ‘biocides’ to kill bacteria present in the water used in the fracking process. The amounts of these chemicals used is very small – amounting to a few hundred gallons of chemicals compared to the 1 to 2+ million gallons of water used in a frack. The companies producing these chemicals protect the formulations of these preparations as proprietary secrets as the competition for any business in these fields is keen. Yes – the EPA should know what those chemicals are and test for them so that we can all judge more appropriately whether a problem exists or not.
dans-in-co is absolutely right – the lions share of fracking is thousands of feet below the surface and presents no problem for ground water purity. None. The couple areas that do demonstrate ground water infiltration problems are very shallow at less than a thousand feet below the surface. Foolishly, fracking should have never been used in those areas.
Andrew indicates that fracking itself is a danger – not so! He also plays into the popular notion that the chemicals used are a danger – really? Fracking is just water under pressure and the chemicals are used precisely to protect the environment and the large amounts of capital required to produce the products we demand.
No – big business should not be trusted and big government even less. I would love to see unbiased testing of the hydraulic fracturing process but I doubt that will ever happen. There is too much money involved and when an issue becomes politicized the first casualty is too often – the truth.
This is one article that spans both left and right leaning readers and is important as any political smoke screen DC throws at us…
The government does not pollute the water and with reduced regulation enforcement under W, many companies, large and small took advantage of this – dumping milk truck cleaning chemicals into streams to the tracking nightmare we are just learning more about today. The companies choosing to pollute are making a choice – for taking the easy way out of their chemical mess. If the EPA should go away, do you think these same companies may now find a soul and change their ways… On the environmental issues, I side with the left – corporations have abandoned the ability to serve anyone but their shareholder masters.
My well is 370 feet deep and I dearly hope I do not lose control of the fine quality and abundance to some form of “incident” by corporate greed.
Everyone in the western states also have to deal with water and gas line breaking in an earthquake,and the very slow response time to fix everything….