Water Pollution

Water Resource Plan

Everyone knows that to survive you need water. What everyone does not know is that what is being put into the water that we drink, that we swim in, and the water that we use for everyday activities has made it unsafe for everything that needs it to survive, plants, animals, and even humans. To sum it up our planet and everything in to can not survive without water. Many states have water that is very unsafe to drink and has made a lot of people very sick. Without water plants will die, animals will die and so will people. So the big question is why are we doing this to the most important thing in the world? Look at it this way, the one thing in this world that every living thing needs to survive is being taken advantage of only because it has always been there. In this paper I plan on informing people of the issues that have and still are taking place in our world, and I plan on informing everyone of a solution to prevent this issues from continuing.

“Although Earth has plenty of water, about 97% of it is salty and not consumable by most terrestrial organisms.” “Water experts predict the in 2025; more than one-third of the human population will live in areas where there isn’t enough fresh water for drinking and irrigation.” (Environmental Science. (2007)(Chapter 10)(p. 236). Thinking about the future and realizing the there will not be enough drinking water for the human population is a very frightening thing. So what is the cause of our fresh water supply and why is it becoming such an issue in maintaining it? Water pollution is a number of different things being put into our water. It can come from a number of different sources and can affect many different things, point-source pollution is when pollution is caused by only one thing, and non-point source pollution is caused by a number of polluting materials. Non-point source is very hard to maintain because there are so many different sources that has caused it.

Many times water pollution only affects the surrounding area where the pollution was caused, but in some cases pollution can affect the environment hundreds of miles away from where it started, such as nuclear waste. When this happens it is called transboundry pollution. This is caused from factories, cars, landfills, and many other things. Many things that are in houses are sources of water pollution, and have affected many rivers and lakes. In many countries sewage is a big cause in water pollution, because urine, faeces, pharmaceuticals that are dangerous, and chemicals used in homes are washed into the water causing unsanitary water for the people. Sewage in the lakes and rivers where people play and get their drinking water has caused a lot of people to become very ill and in some cases get diseases.

Industrial facilities are using fresh water to dispose of their waste into many of the world’s water resources and causing serious pollutant issues. Some of these include but are not limited to: Mercury which can cause illness through poison, Asbestos which can cause cancer, and mesothelioma, sulphur which causes marine life to die, and oils which causes marine plants to not get enough light due to the thickness and can cause the fish do get sick that humans eat, therefore affecting humans health. Many forms of water pollution may not damage the health of animals and humans immediately but can be harmful if they are exposed for a long period of time. As stated in (The government Global Challenge) (1999) “Every year, 14 billions pounds of sewage, sludge, and garbage are dumped into the world's oceans. 19 trillion gallons of waste also enter the water annually. The problem of ocean pollution affects every nation around the world. This is especially true because water is able to transport pollution from one location to another. For many years, chemicals were dumped into bodies of water without concern. While many countries have now banned such behavior, it continues to go on today. As the world has industrialized and its population has grown, the problem of water pollution has intensified. The simple fact that millions of people live along coastlines and near rivers means that these bodies of water are likely candidates for heavy and destructive pollution.” The sad part is that humans are the leading cause of this type of pollution. “It is hard to know now what our oceans will look like in the future. Just how damaged they will be by pollution is uncertain.” The animals that live in the ocean are affected the most by this issue. Some of the fish that is consumed by humans have been subjected to the pollution and has caused people to become very sick.

There are many sustainability strategies out there today. Many people have come together to help this existing problem from turning into a world crises. Edwin Herricks and Jian-Ping Suen (2006) have come up with a plan that will not only help the water quality but also provide a better focus on the physical habitat in the water with their resource project. “With “engineering” of the physical habitat, we can connect water quality management needs by focusing on how the same hydrologic variability that produces physical habitat variability produces the concentration, duration, and frequency of contaminant exposure, which is the key to relating water quality to ecosystem sustainability.” Certain sustainability strategies and solutions have been established to try to fix some of the issues, but still we are faced with this ongoing problem. Like the Safe Drinking Water Act, this act was passed in 1974 it set federal standards for the drinking water and guaranteed that there would be safe public drinking water supplied though out the United States. This law required the “EPA to determine the maximum contaminant level, which is the maximum permissible amount of any water pollutant that might adversely affect human health.” This act has provided billions of people the resources they need to survive.

What I propose to do is set up a timeline for six months and began a research program that will not only provide solutions to water pollution but find ways to get communities evolved in maintaining