Illinois State Water Survey

blog posts

• Conflicting Reports on Fracking and Groundwater Quality

  Jun 27, 2013 4:30 pm

  A couple of recent reports about the effects of fracking on groundwater quality seem to be contradictory. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (Jackson, R.B., et al., 2013. Increased stray gas abundance in a subset of drinking water wells near Marcellus shale gas extraction) found that wells in northeastern Pennsylvania where the Marcellus Shale is being drilled for natural gas has high levels of gases (methane, ethane, propane) that they say are due to drilling practices. On the other hand, a paper published in the journal Groundwater (Molofsky, L.J., et al., 2013. Evaluation of Methane Sources in Groundwater in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Groundwater 51(3):333–349) suggests that methane is ubiquitous in groundwater in northeastern Pennsylvania, and is not the result of shale gas extraction.

  

  Image from UConn Today

• Water Management Issues in the Chicago Region

  Jun 24, 2013 3:15 pm

  This is not strictly a water quality issue, but Marcella Bondie of the Metropolitan Planning Commission in Chicago recently posted a blog post about water management issues in the Chicago region. Its title is “Water, Water Everywhere? DuPage Water Commission leads efforts to better manage Lake Michigan water”, and it’s a good summary.

• Groundwater: Possible Long-Term Source of Nitrate to Streams

  Jun 6, 2013 9:15 am

  We’ve known for a long time that too much nitrogen in streams, lakes, and seas can be a bad thing, and many efforts are being made to reduce the amount of nitrogen (primarily nitrate) coming off of agricultural fields. In addition to being smarter about when and how much fertilizer is applied, a number of techniques designed to slow down movement of runoff to streams, such as constructing wetlands or water-table management, are being tested. Decreasing the concentrations and loads of nitrate in streams in agricultural regions has been remarkably difficult, however, and oftentimes do not match expectations based on these new best management practices (BMPs). A recent study by USGS scientists suggests that the long times it takes for groundwater to discharge to streams is the most likely factor.

• Sodium and Drinking Water

  Apr 5, 2013 3:45 pm

  Too much sodium in our diets has long been known to raise blood pressure and increase the risk of heart disease and stroke. A modeling study published in the journal Hypertension (Coxson, P.G., et al. 2013. Mortality Benefits From US Population-wide Reduction in Sodium Consumption: Projections From 3 Modeling Approaches) suggests that even a small reduction in sodium consumption could save hundreds of thousands of lives. I’ve been involved with a lot of research on the contamination of shallow aquifers from road salt (sodium chloride) runoff, but we typically focus on chloride and not sodium. Chloride is a conservative ion, so it travels in groundwater basically at the speed of the water, whereas sodium is more reactive and thus more difficult to predict in the subsurface. But sodium is definitely increasing in these aquifers. This sodium study got me wondering how much sodium we ingest through drinking water.

  

• Drought and Algal Blooms

  Mar 29, 2013 5:15 pm

  During the 2012 drought, the hot, dry conditions caused blooms of blue-green algae (also known as cyanobacteria) in some water bodies. These blooms can produce a toxin known as microcystin, which has a World Health Organization (WHO) drinking water standard of 20 µg/L. They can also foul the taste and odor of drinking water. Elgin and Aurora reported serious issues with algae in the Fox River in 2012, making the water difficult to treat. Here’s what this stuff looks like:

  

  (photo by Mike Bundren, Illinois EPA)

• Please Remove Pigs Before Drinking Water

  Mar 15, 2013 4:30 pm

  I was looking through the front section of The New York Times the other day (March 13, 2013), and there were several articles having to do with water and water quality. There was an article about the lack of potable water in India, including the depletion of some groundwater supplies. Another article told how public schools in New York City are saving large volumes of water as a result of replacing thousands of old toilets with low-flush models. There was also an op-ed piece about how the melting of ice in the Arctic Ocean is opening up sea lanes and what that might mean. But the article that really caught my attention was in the World Briefing section about how 6,000 dead pigs were found floating in the Huangpu River in China, which provides drinking water to Shanghai. Ugh.

   

• 'Removing' Micropollutants from Wastewater

  Mar 1, 2013 3:15 pm

  We ask a lot of our wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). We expect them to clean up our sewage, so that the effluent that is returned to our water resources is environmentally benign. A century or more ago, the main goal was to prevent the spread of water-borne diseases, and treatment mainly consisted of dilution. Since that time, our environmental sensibilities have increased, and treatment techniques have been vastly improved to disinfect wastewater and remove pollutants to protect receiving waters. At first those pollutants were primarily limited to nutrients. Now we’re asking WWTPs to remove other things. Any idea what this compound is?

   

• Our Stressed Great Lakes

  Feb 15, 2013 3:45 pm

  A recent study investigated the cumulative effects of human activities on the health of the Great Lakes, and concluded that Lakes Erie, Ontario, and Michigan face the greatest threats, while Like Superior is the least threatened. The most stressed areas are along coastlines, especially near major metropolitan areas, which is not surprising. Threats include invasive species (especially zebra mussels and lampreys), climate change (affecting lake temperature and water levels), phosphorous from erosion of agricultural soils, and contaminants from urban areas. Stressed areas almost always have multiple stressors, complicating restoration efforts. The authors of the study note that restoration efforts in the Great Lakes are almost exclusively focused on high-stress sites, but almost never have information about the full range of stressors.

• Bottled Water vs. Tap Water: And the Winner is'

  Jan 3, 2013 3:30 pm

  One of the first posts I wrote for this blog was that the quality of bottled water was no better than tap water. And now comes a study showing that, in fact, the quality of tap water may actually be BETTER than bottled water.

• Drug Resistance in River Water

  Dec 19, 2012 3:15 pm

  A paper just published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology (Chen et al. 2012, A Survey of Drug Resistance bla Genes Originating from Synthetic Plasmid Vectors in Six Chinese Rivers, vol. 46, pp. 13448−13454) reports on the detection of environmental microbes with antibiotic resistance genes in six rivers in China. Researchers have known for some time about drug-resistant bacteria in hospitals and nursing homes, where the large use of antibiotics has allowed such “superbugs” to proliferate. Infections caused by these drug-resistant bacteria can have very high death rates. In recent years, scientists have discovered that antibiotic resistance genes have been finding their way into the natural environment.