Illinois State Water Survey

blog posts

• Introduction to Blog on Water Quality, focusing on Illinois

  Aug 27, 2010 5:00 pm452 views

  Water quality is a critical component of water for all of its uses. My goal for this blog is to provide a forum for discussing water quality issues, primarily as they apply to Illinois.

• Illinois Water 2010 Conference

  Oct 15, 2010 11:00 am257 views

  Last week (October 6-7, 2010) was the biennial Illinois Water conference, hosted by the Illinois Water Resources Center at UI. There were sessions covering a large variety of issues important to Illinois, from green infrastructure to climate change to Asian Carp. There were a few sessions on water quality. I gave a talk on chloride in Illinois waters on October 7.

• Why study water quality?

  Oct 21, 2010 4:30 pm17932 views

  This seems like an obvious question. We need to understand water quality in order to protect our health, and also the health of ecosystems. Those, of course, are the main reasons we are interested in water quality, so that we make sure our drinking water is safe and we are not damaging the environment.

• Bottled Water vs. Tap Water

  Oct 29, 2010 11:00 am6938 views

  The only reason to buy bottled water is for the convenience (and possibly taste). In Illinois, homeowners who have their own wells often buy drinking water due to quality problems with their well water. But if you get your drinking water from a public water supply, that water is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has developed drinking water standards for more than 100 contaminants. Bottled water, on the other hand, has been defined as food and is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), using different standards than EPA. FDA's regulations are defined as Current Good Manufacturing Practices (CGMPs), such as using sanitary conditions, protecting water sources, and analyzing for a smaller set of contaminants than EPA requires. This is not to say that bottled water is unsafe, but its quality is no better than tap water.

• Viruses in Deep Groundwater

  Nov 5, 2010 3:30 pm243 views

  When I was an undergraduate, which really wasnt that long ago--okay, 30 years ago--the prevailing wisdom was that there wasnt life below the soil zone. The idea was that since all life was based on energy from the sun (another assumption thats no longer valid), you couldnt have life too far away from the suns reach. Well, we have found microbes pretty much everywhere weve looked, and the question now is where will we NOT find life.

• Nano-particles

  Nov 12, 2010 10:15 am303 views

  At the recent Geological Society of America (GSA) annual meeting in Denver, Mike Hochella, a geochemist at Virginia Tech, gave a couple of talks about nano-particles, an area of research he thinks is the next big thing in the geosciences. In fact, he thinks understanding them is a key to understanding the workings of many major Earth systems in a fundamental way.

• Mountain Top Removal

  Nov 23, 2010 10:15 am327 views

  Mountain top removal, i.e., stripping off the tops of mountains to mine coal, is not an issue in Illinois, but I grew up in Kentucky and its been a big controversy there and other Appalachian states for a long time. Its hard to believe that there was ever any doubt that mountain top removal polluted surface waters, but thats what some mining industry groups would have us believe. Recent studies put to bed those doubts.

• Cholera and Water Quality

  Dec 3, 2010 3:30 pm532 views

  The recent outbreak of cholera in Haiti is a serious health crisis, infecting more than 70,000 people and resulting in the deaths of more than 1600 as of December 1, 2010. Cholera is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholera, and causes severe diarrhea. If detected quickly, it is easily treatable. The cause of the outbreak is still unknown, although it has been linked to Nepalese soldiers who are part of the relief forces for the massive earthquake in January of this year. The ultimate cause is poor sanitation leading to contaminated water supplies, because people get cholera from ingesting contaminated water or food.

• Detection Limits

  Dec 17, 2010 4:15 pm333 views

  One of the major advances in water quality studies is the improvement in analytical techniques, both in the lab and the field, but especially in the lab. When I first started in this field, detection limits were usually in the low parts per million (ppm), but parts per billion (ppb) detection limits were starting to become typical for many ions and compounds. Now for some analyses detection limits are being reported in parts per trillion (ppt) with regularity, an increase in detection of 1000 times or more in just a couple of decades. Were finding things in water we were unable to detect before, such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs). Something new to worry about! But what does it mean to be detecting compounds at those levels?

• Some Good News on Nitrate, from Denmark

  Jan 6, 2011 3:00 pm853 views

  With the possible exception of arsenic, nitrate is the most widespread pollutant of groundwater. Unlike arsenic, which is primarily a naturally occurring contaminant, elevated nitrate concentrations are almost always due to human activities, primarily in agricultural settings. Tilling of soil, application of synthetic fertilizers, and livestock manure are the primary sources of nitrate. As all residents of Illinois surely know, there is a lot of agricultural activity in the state, mainly corn and soybeans. And because of this, there are surface water and shallow groundwater resources in Illinois that suffer from excess nitrate (and other forms of nitrogen).

• Karst Springs and Water Quality

  Jan 24, 2011 4:00 pm2660 views

  A couple of weeks ago I was at a conference dedicated to sinkholes held in St. Louis. About 100 engineers and geoscientists from a total of 14 or 15 countries gathered to discuss issues related to sinkholes in various geologic settings, but primarily limestone karst.

• Fluoride

  Feb 4, 2011 4:45 pm2102 views

  A recent article in our local paper caught my eye; it reported that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was recommending lowering the amount of fluoride in drinking water. The reason is that many of us are getting additional fluoride from other dental products (toothpaste, mouthwash), and too much fluoride is not a good thing.

• Cholera and Water Quality (revisited)

  Feb 22, 2011 2:15 pm346 views

  A couple of months ago I posted about the cholera outbreak in Haiti, and how we in the U.S. dont have to worry much about that and other water-borne diseases due to our sanitation. A recent letter to the journal Nature makes the point that a disconnect between the medical community and hydrogeologists and other water experts will not be a long-term solution for Haiti.

• The First Arsenic Post

  Mar 9, 2011 2:15 pm966 views

  Arsenic is one of the most common natural contaminants of groundwater in Illinois, and weve done several studies on it, so I anticipate Ill be writing a lot of posts about it on this blog. I was prompted to write one today because of the recent discovery of a high arsenic area near Champaign. As was reported in our local paper, The News Gazette, Sunday February 28, 2011, a domestic well in Tolono that was recently sampled had an arsenic concentration of about 300 ug/L, about 30 times the drinking water standard of 10 ug/L (equivalent to 10 ppb), and the highest arsenic level Ive ever seen in Illinois. By 50%!

• No, we're not running out of water, but...

  Apr 21, 2011 3:15 pm506 views

  I recently received a newsletter that talked about something that has bothered me from time to time. I cant tell you how often I hear knowledgeable people, environmentalists and journalists usually, say that were running out of water. Were not running out of water. We cant run out of water. For all intents and purposes, we have a constant amount of water on this planet; we cant destroy water or make new water (at least in amounts that would make any kind of difference). The hydrologic cycle is a closed loop. Its one of the primary differences between the energy crisis and the water crisis; when we use oil or coal or natural gas, we really do use it up, ultimately converting it to carbon dioxide and water, and we really are running out of fossil fuels.

• Gasoline Additives and Groundwater

  Apr 29, 2011 2:15 pm1789 views

  With gasoline pushing up to and past $4 per gallon in Illinois, this is an opportune time to re-think our driving habits. But from an environmental perspective, it's always a good time to look at ways to use less gasoline. The less we use, the less the potential for pollution of water supplies from gasoline compounds.

• Pharmaceuticals in Water

  May 20, 2011 4:45 pm1143 views

  Not so long ago, back in the 1990s or so, nobody really worried about what might happen if pharmaceutical drugs got released into the environment. In fact, we were advised to get rid of our unused drugs by flushing them down the toilet. What happened after that nobody really seemed to care about. If anything, it was assumed that the wastewater treatment processes would destroy them.

• Reading Your Water Quality Report

  Jun 7, 2011 3:15 pm484 views

  I recently received in the mail the annual water quality report from our local water company, Illinois American Water. I usually only give them a quick glance, but this year I decided to take a closer look.

• Our Nitrogen Footprint

  Jun 24, 2011 10:00 am339 views

  Most people are familiar with the concept of a carbon footprint, the amount of carbon dioxide an individual or entity produces. Our transportation, food, manufacturing, building, and land use choices all affect the amount of carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere. Ever since the start of the Industrial Revolution, humans have had a major impact on the carbon cycle on Earth, resulting in climate change, accelerated melting of glaciers, rising sea levels, acidification of the oceans, etc. Another element whose cycle we have disrupted in a major way is nitrogen (N), and with impacts that may be similarly serious.

• More Good News on the Environment, This Time From Germany

  Jul 15, 2011 4:45 pm217 views

  About 6 months ago I wrote a post reporting on decreasing nitrate concentrations in Danish groundwater. The other day I ran across some encouraging news from a study in Germany, on organic pollutants in rivers.

• Hexavalent Chromium in Chicago Drinking Water

  Aug 12, 2011 2:15 pm769 views

  In this past Sundays Chicago Tribune (August 7, 2011), the lead article was about high levels of hexavalent chromium in Chicagos drinking water. The article was titled Toxic metal stays in drinking water. Why is this news? After all, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a drinking water standard for total chromium (100 ppb), thus public water supplies are required to meet this standard.

• "Bag It", the movie: Plastics in the Environment

  Aug 31, 2011 5:45 pm179 views

  The award winning documentary Bag It will be shown at the Art Theater in downtown Champaign on Tuesday, September 20, 2011, at 7 PM. I have seen the film and highly recommend it. It starts out as a critical look at plastic bags, but ends up being a much broader examination of the effects of plastic on the environment and human society.

• China and Pollution

  Sep 22, 2011 5:00 pm540 views

  Ive been noticing a lot of stories about water pollution in China lately. Ive never been to China, but reports Ive read over the past couple of decades led me to believe that many water resources in China are heavily polluted, and the booming Chinese economy has been increasing the pressure on water resources. But there may be some good news as well.

• The Second Arsenic Post (Tolono)

  Sep 29, 2011 10:30 am417 views

  My first arsenic post last March reported on the discovery that there were high arsenic levels in groundwater near Tolono, IL. We recently finished a small study of the area and are preparing a short report. Well be presenting the results at a public meeting at the Tolono Town Hall on Tuesday, October 4, 2011, at 7 PM.

• Dealing with Elevated Arsenic Levels

  Oct 7, 2011 9:30 am193 views

  Tom Holm and I presented the results from our study of arsenic in groundwater in the Tolono area at a public meeting this past Tuesday (October 4). The crowd was small but very interested in the topic, and asked a lot of good questions. In this post I thought Id post some of what Tom talked about regarding options for dealing with elevated arsenic in well water.

• Road Salt (part 1)

  Oct 28, 2011 2:45 pm1010 views

  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:

• Road Salt and Lakes in Lake County

  Nov 4, 2011 4:00 pm235 views

  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 and Rivers in Chicago

  Nov 11, 2011 2:00 pm511 views

  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.

• Report on Arsenic in Tolono Area Published

  Nov 22, 2011 4:45 pm236 views

  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 in Groundwater (Part 1)

  Dec 1, 2011 4:30 pm336 views

  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.

• Road Salt in Groundwater (Part 2)

  Dec 19, 2011 2:00 pm427 views

  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.

• Water Quality and the Super Bowl

  Jan 26, 2012 4:30 pm163 views

  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?

   

• Selenium and Fish Mutations

  Feb 27, 2012 11:15 am698 views

  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:

   

• Banning Bisphenol-A from Food Containers?

  Mar 30, 2012 2:45 pm183 views

  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.

   

• Five Myths About Water

  Apr 10, 2012 9:30 am166 views

  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.

• Fracking and Water Quality

  May 3, 2012 2:15 pm219 views

  Currently one of the most controversial issues concerning groundwater quality is whether hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” might contaminate aquifers. Fracking involves the injection of water with “proppants” and chemical additives to open and enlarge fractures within a rock formation in order to release oil or gas. Proppants are usually sand or ceramic pellets which help hold open the created fractures. The chemical additives are currently considered to be proprietary, and thus their compositions are not available to the public. Fracking has been used by the oil and gas industry for many years, but recent advances in horizontal drilling technology have allowed exploitation of some gas-bearing geologic formations that were, until recently, uneconomical. The most famous of these formations is the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and New York.

• Soda Consumption vs. Bottled Water

  May 18, 2012 9:45 am771 views

  This isn’t really a water quality issue, but an article in the Business Section of the New York Times on May 16, 2012, reported that soda consumption is declining in America. That’s good news, right? Except that the decrease in soda consumption is almost completely balanced by an increase in bottled water consumption (since 1998). Seems like we Americans just like to buy bottles. Actually, the bottled water consumption has leveled off in the past few years, although it is still at an historic high. Why do we spend $1.29 for a bottle of water, when we can fill a glass or bottle from a tap and get water with at least as good quality, for fractions of a penny? Convenience, I guess. Or we are complete slaves to marketers.

• Regulating pharmaceuticals

  Jun 8, 2012 10:15 am112 views

  In a recent article published in Nature titled “The hidden costs of flexible fertility”, Richard Owen and Susan Jobling report that the European Commission recently announced that it intends to regulate the synthetic estrogen compound ethinyl estradiol (EE2) under the Water Framework Directive. With more than 100 million women worldwide using contraceptive pills, a lot of synthetic estrogen is entering the environment, causing negative effects to aquatic species, such as changing the sex of fish.

• More thoughts on estrogens in the environment

  Jun 29, 2012 9:15 am156 views

  In my last post I mentioned how the European Commission intends to regulate the synthetic estrogen compound ethinyl estradiol (EE2), which has been discovered to cause ecological damage to aquatic species. The Atlantic magazine recently published their annual “Ideas Issue,” and one of their big ideas was to allow the pill to be sold over the counter.

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  Drought and Water Quality

  Jul 17, 2012 5:15 pm1710 views

  As I’m sure most everyone knows, we are in the midst of an extremely widespread and severe drought, one of the largest ever in the U.S. The entire state of Illinois is in drought, and parts of southern Illinois are in extreme and even exceptional drought, which is the worst category. During a drought, water quantity issues are obviously of most concern, especially as it affects agriculture and drinking water supplies. However, there are a few water quality issues as well.

   

• Atrazine Court Settlement

  Aug 3, 2012 4:15 pm797 views

  Atrazine is the second most heavily used pesticide in the U.S. (glyphosate is first), with around 80 million pounds applied annually, primarily to corn. Thus a map of atrazine use shows the greatest applications in the Midwest corn belt. It’s very good at what it’s designed to do, suppressing broadleaf and grassy weeds. One of its drawbacks, however, is that it is persistent in the environment, including water resources. Recently Syngenta, atrazine’s manufacturer, reached an agreement to set up a $105 million fund for use in removing atrazine from drinking water.

• Antibiotics and Livestock

  Sep 14, 2012 3:00 pm97 views

  An article in last week’s Science section of the New York Times (September 4, 2012) reported on the rise of antibiotic resistance in bacteria associated with livestock. I knew that a large percentage of antibiotics used in the U.S. went to livestock, but I didn’t realize it was 80 percent, as the Times article reports. There are no reporting requirements for the use of antibiotics in animals, so there is a serious lack of data on what’s happening in the environment as a result of this large-scale dosing of animals.

• Bag It Redux: Plastics in the Environment

  Oct 23, 2012 4:45 pm53 views

  The movie "Bag It: Is your life too plastic?", which was shown at the Art Theater in Champaign last fall and which I reviewed, is again being shown in town. It will be at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC), 1 E. Hazelwood Drive, Champaign, on Thursday October 25, at 7:00 PM. It's located just west of the Research Park. Dr. B.K. Sharma, a senior chemist at the ISTC who is doing research on converting plastic bags into oil to potentially be used as fuel or lubricants, will give a 15 minute presentation before the film. Go!

   

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  Water Reuse

  Nov 9, 2012 2:30 pm301 views

  How would you feel about drinking treated wastewater? Ick, right? But what if you were assured that it met all federal and state drinking water standards? Still doesn’t sound too appetizing? If that’s how you feel, you’re not alone. Proposals to reuse treated wastewater as a drinking water have been consistently shot down in the U.S.

   

• Update on European Regulation of Estrogens

  Dec 7, 2012 9:30 am43 views

  In a post last May, I wrote about the European Commission’s intent to regulate the synthetic estrogen compound ethinyl estradiol (EE2) under the Water Framework Directive. According to a recent article in Nature, those regulations will be not approved by the European Parliament. Intense lobbying by the water and pharmaceutical industries has apparently convinced the European Union member states that the financial costs are too much.

• Drug Resistance in River Water

  Dec 19, 2012 3:15 pm57 views

  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.

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

  Jan 3, 2013 3:30 pm451 views

  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.

• Our Stressed Great Lakes

  Feb 15, 2013 3:45 pm1021 views

  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.

• 'Removing' Micropollutants from Wastewater

  Mar 1, 2013 3:15 pm207 views

  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?

   

• Please Remove Pigs Before Drinking Water

  Mar 15, 2013 4:30 pm202 views

  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.