Illinois State Water Survey

blog posts

• Five Myths About Water

  Apr 10, 2012 9:30 am

  A recent op-ed at the Washington Post website by Charles Fishman, author of “The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water,” discusses five prevalent myths about water: (1) We’re running out of water; (2) Bottled water is better than tap water; (3) The 21^st century will be a century of water wars; (4) America is using more water all the time; and (5) You need to drink eight glasses a day.

• Banning Bisphenol-A from Food Containers?

  Mar 30, 2012 2:45 pm

  Last August I wrote a post about bisphenol-A (BPA), an Endocrine Disrupting Chemical (EDC), which can mess with human and animal hormonal processes. Today on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, there was a report that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was about to decide whether to ban BPA from food packaging.

   

• Selenium and Fish Mutations

  Feb 27, 2012 11:15 am

  An article in the February 23, 2012 edition of the The New York Times caught my eye. The title is "Mutated Trout Raise New Concerns Near Mine Sites." The article describes results of a study in southern Idaho monitoring creeks impacted by a phosphate mine. The pictures of mutated trout offspring are disturbing, to say the least:

   

• Water Quality and the Super Bowl

  Jan 26, 2012 4:30 pm

  You may have heard that on Super Bowl Sunday, America's biggest secular holiday, wastewater systems throughout the country are put under almost unbearable pressure due to everyone going to the bathroom at halftime and flusing their toilets at the same time. Well, turns out this a fairly persistent urban myth. But some researchers have wondered if the Super Bowl may be having a different effect on our wastewater systems. Namely, does illicit drug use spike during the game, and if so, can we find proof in the wastewater?

   

• Road Salt in Groundwater (Part 2)

  Dec 19, 2011 2:00 pm

  In my last post I presented some data showing increasing chloride concentrations in groundwater in the Chicago region. One of the interesting things was that concentrations and rates of increase were lower in Cook and Lake Counties, compared to counties west or south of Chicago. We believe there are several reasons for this.

• Road Salt in Groundwater (Part 1)

  Dec 1, 2011 4:30 pm

  Being primarily a groundwater guy, my initial interest in road salt runoff was whether we could detect it in aquifers. The Illinois State Water Survey (ISWS) has a groundwater quality database going back over 100 years, and since road salting started taking off around 1960, I figured we might be able to see increases in chloride and total dissolved solids (TDS) concentrations in well samples. Short answer: Yes we do.

• Report on Arsenic in Tolono Area Published

  Nov 22, 2011 4:45 pm

  The final report 'Arsenic in Groundwater in the Tolono Region' by Walt Kelly and Tom Holm, Illinois State Water Survey Miscellaneous Report 196, is now available at the ISWS website:

• Road Salt and Rivers in Chicago

  Nov 11, 2011 2:00 pm

  While lakes have been impacted by road salt runoff in the Chicago region (see my previous 2 posts), the impact on rivers and streams has probably been even more dramatic. Various agencies, including the USGS, Illinois EPA, and Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRDGC), have been monitoring was quality in many rivers and canals since at least the 1970s. Almost all of the rivers and streams monitored have had significant increases in chloride (Cl-) and sodium (Na) concentrations since that time.

• Road Salt and Lakes in Lake County

  Nov 4, 2011 4:00 pm

  In my last post, I began talking about road salt and its environmental effects. In that post I showed a plot of increasing chloride in Lake Michigan due to road salt runoff. While the increase in the past 25 years was only 3 mg/L, that represents about 660,000 tons of chloride being added annually to the lake. Other lakes in northeastern Illinois have seen much larger increases in chloride concentrations.

• Road Salt (part 1)

  Oct 28, 2011 2:45 pm

  With winter just around the corner, I thought Id run a few posts on road salt, something Ive been studying for a while. Take a look at this figure, which shows the amount of road salt purchased annually for the past 70 years or so: