Groundwater in Illinois

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3 New Hydrogeologists

Nov 18, 2019 5:00 pm197 views

The Groundwater Section at the Illinois State Water Survey is pleased to welcome three new scientists to help with the research and service work we are doing: Cecilia Cullen, Mike Krasowski, and Allan Jones.
4,000 Year-Old Pollution

Oct 12, 2017 11:45 am125 views

We've been polluting for a long time.
A Change in Focus: More Groundwater

Aug 17, 2017 9:45 am55 views

Due to various circumstances, I have been unable to maintain a reasonable schedule for blog posts on my blog "Water Quality, Focus on Illinois." In fact, I haven't posted in a number of months. As a result, we are expanding the blogs to include multiple authors in the Groundwater Science Section at the Illinois State Water Survey, Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois. The scope of the blog posts will be broadened to include many topics on groundwater, not just water quality, still with an emphasis on Illinois, although not limited to our state. We hope you enjoy the new look, and we look forward to your feedback.
Acid Mine Waste Disaster

Aug 11, 2015 3:30 pm536 views

You may have seen this story about the release of an estimated 3 million gallons of toxic water into a river in southwestern Colorado last week. The images were pretty awful, showing the Animas River a sickening yellow-orange color. A USEPA team was working on diverting flow from an abandoned gold mine when they accidently poked a hole in a dam and caused the release. The result was contamination by a classic case of acid mine drainage.
Animas River Spill Follow-Up

Dec 22, 2016 3:45 pm51 views

The first peer-reviewed paper (as far as I can tell) related to the Animas River, Colorado, was recently published. An estimated 3 million gallons of toxic acid mine drainage water was released into a small tributary of the Animas River due to the failure of a dam containing the waste.
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.
Arsenic in Drinking Water Can Affect Children’s IQ

Aug 22, 2014 9:45 am134 views

A recent paper suggests that children exposed to elevated levels of arsenic in their drinking water experienced declines in intelligence [G.A. Wasserman et al., 2014. A cross-sectional study of well water arsenic and child IQ in Maine schoolchildren. Environmental Health 13:23 doi:10.1186/1476-069X-13-23]. Previous studies reported similar results in South Asia and Bangladesh, but this is the first study showing problems in the U.S. Most disturbing to me was that the arsenic concentration threshold above which effects were seen was so low, only 5 µg/L (5 ppb), or half of the drinking water standard in the U.S. and Europe (10 µg/L). The researchers state that the effects on IQ are similar to those found for children with elevated levels of lead in their blood.
Arsenic in Vietnamese Groundwater

Sep 25, 2013 4:00 pm133 views

It’s not every day someone I know is quoted in the New York Times. In yesterday’s (Sept. 24, 2013) ScienceTimes section (p. D5), there was an article highlighting work by Lex van Geen, a geochemist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. Lex contacted the Water Survey a couple of years ago about some potential collaboration on arsenic in groundwater in central Illinois, a subject we have studied in some detail. In fact, we just received news that a National Science Foundation proposal that one of our staff (Tom Holm) is co-PI on with Lex has been funded. The research will use a new sampling technique (“freeze shoe”) to collect intact cores of aquifer material, and initial work will probably be done in Tazewell County.
A Salty Winter

Feb 21, 2014 10:45 am615 views

Somewhat lost in all the hype about the heavy snows and frigid temperatures much of the country has had this winter, and the frustration with a pothole epidemic and treacherous roads and sidewalks, is that we may be applying record amounts of road deicing chemicals, primarily salt (NaCl). A couple of recent articles in the New York Times highlighted how much salt we’ve been using. From an article on February 16, 2014, it was reported that Chicago has already spent $25 million for plowing and salting, $5 million more than budgeted. That’s with half of February and all of March still to come; in a typical March, Chicago gets about 7 inches of snow. Other data from that article: Pennsylvania is using road salt at a pace 24% ahead of normal, and Maine has already spent almost 40% more than they do in a normal year.
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.
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!
"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.
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.
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.
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.
Brackish Groundwater: A Potential Source for Drinking Water

Jul 31, 2015 2:15 pm155 views

A recent article discussed the potential for desalinating brackish groundwater as a potential source of drinking water, specifically in Texas. West Texas is dry and has limited fresh groundwater resources, so it may make economic sense in areas like that.
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.
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.
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.
Climate Change and Water Quality

Jul 20, 2016 4:00 pm77 views

Groundwater is generally shielded from variations in the weather, and changes in groundwater quality due to changes in temperature and precipitation are likely to be muted and subtle. However, surface water quality is a different story, and a recent article in Nature discusses this.
Compound in Fracking Fluid Found in Domestic Well

May 5, 2015 3:00 pm65 views

In a paper just published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it’s been reported that an organic compound used in gas-drilling fluids, 2-n-Butoxyethanol (C4H9OC2H4OH), was detected in a domestic well in Pennsylvania. This was a bit of a surprise, because actually the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, occurs thousands of feet beneath the aquifer. It appears the contamination is the result of poor practices at the surface, either drilling fluid escaping during the initial drilling of the well, or a leaky drilling waste pit.
Conflicting Reports on Fracking and Groundwater Quality

Jun 27, 2013 4:30 pm322 views

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
Contaminant Spill of the Day

Jan 10, 2014 3:45 pm109 views

There was a major contamination event in West Virginia yesterday, causing the governor to issue a state of emergency. A large amount of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, a coal preparation foaming agent, leaked in the Elk River just outside of Charleston. The size of the spill hasn’t been reported yet. About 300,000 people have been warned not to use tap water for drinking, cooking, or bathing, and a number of businesses and schools have closed as a result.
Creating Energy while Cleaning Water

Sep 18, 2013 4:15 pm50 views

Here’s an interesting news article involving water quality. Engineers from Stanford are developing techniques to harness electricity from microbes as they work to clean human sewage. Basically, by inserting positive and negative electrodes into wasterwater, the researchers “fish for electrons”. During reactions that degrade organic molecules, microbes cluster around the negative electrode and produce electrons, which are then captured by the positive electrode.
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.
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?
Disinfectant Byproducts

Jul 12, 2013 3:00 pm66 views

A friend recently showed me a newsletter he receives from a company that sells vitamins and dietary supplements; an article in it warned that disinfectant byproducts in public drinking water are a serious health risk. The author referred to a paper published by researchers at the University of Illinois that shows some of these compounds kill cells and cause DNA damage (Pals, J.A., et al., 2011. Biological mechanism for the toxicity of haloacetic acid drinking water disinfection byproducts. Environmental Science & Technology 45:5791–5797). The author then states that unless you have a deep private well that you can test and trust, you should consider buying a distillation system. While disinfection byproducts are no joke and are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, I think the author overstates the problem and its solution.
Drinking Our Own Pee

Jun 17, 2014 3:00 pm71 views

Here’s a great article on Slate.com about drinking “recycled” water.
Drought and Algal Blooms

Mar 29, 2013 5:15 pm359 views

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)
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.
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.
Fish Adapting to Pollution

Dec 22, 2016 4:15 pm155 views

A paper published in Science reports that genetic adaptions in the Atlantic killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) allow it to survive what, in unpolluted environments, would be lethal levels of bioaccumulative dioxin-like contaminants.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Groundwater Depletion in Chicago’s Southwestern Suburbs

Aug 29, 2017 11:30 am2863 views

Sandstone water supplies in the southwest suburbs are at the highest risk, where water levels have reached historic lows, exceeding 1,100 feet of drawdown when wells are pumping.
Groundwater: Possible Long-Term Source of Nitrate to Streams

Jun 6, 2013 9:15 am183 views

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.
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.
High Levels of Lead in Flint Drinking Water

Jan 13, 2016 4:00 pm479 views

About 25% of Flint households have lead levels above the federal standard of 15 parts per billion (ppb), with one home having an almost unbelievable level of 13,200 ppb. But why are there are such high levels of lead in Flint’s water?
How Much Oil is Spilled Annually?

May 8, 2015 9:30 am378 views

Earlier this week it was reported that a train spilled about 2,000 gallons of diesel fuel near the town of Sidney, Illinois (about 15 miles southeast of Champaign). A lot of it apparently ended up in a creek, a tributary of the Salt Fork River. No reports of dead fish yet, but it smelled pretty bad. That story got me wondering, how much oil gets spilled annually?
How Safe Is Our Drinking Water?

Jan 17, 2014 3:29 pm755 views

Here’s a link to what I think is a very good (and brief) article about keeping our drinking water safe, by James Salzman at slate.com. I think a lot of people, including myself, were a bit shaken up by how severely impacted Charleston, WV, was by the discharge of methylcyclohexane methanol (MCHM) into the Elk River, their drinking water supply.
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.
Improving our ability to “see” aquifers

Sep 8, 2017 10:15 am411 views

The Illinois State Water Survey has developed new modeling approaches to analyze the 150+ years of data we have collected in the region, improving both our historic understanding of the aquifers of the state and our modeling capabilities to simulate future water supply planning scenarios.
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.
ISWS Reignites Outreach Activities in Illinois

Jun 1, 2018 1:45 pm188 views

The Illinois State Water Survey’s Groundwater Section has begun taking a more active role in outreach to help the residents and youth in Illinois learn more about groundwater and private wells. The ISWS has been working with Illinois citizens and important stakeholders for more than a century to raise awareness about protecting Illinois’ water resources.
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.
Large Study of Bacterial Water Quality in Sub-Saharan Africa

Nov 17, 2016 10:45 am29 views

A just released study did a meta-analysis of almost 43,000 water samples from 7 countries in sub-Saharan Africa to assess the amount of bacterial contamination and how it varied with respect to source type.
Lithium in Drinking Water

Jul 19, 2013 2:30 pm18152 views

The title of a recent paper caught my eye, “Potential environmental and human health impacts of rechargeable lithium batteries in electronic waste” (Kang, D.H.P., et al., 2013. Environ. Sci. Technol., 47(10):5495–5503). It’s about the potential hazardous nature of some of the heavy elements present in lithium-ion and lithium-poly batteries, which includes lead, chromium, cobalt, copper, nickel, thallium, and silver, if they leach into our water resources. But I was actually more interested in lithium, which reminded me of an article I read a few years ago about how elevated levels of lithium in our drinking water might actually be a positive thing.
Meet Our New Hydrologist: Tyler Pierson

Dec 19, 2018 3:45 pm388 views

Tyler Pierson has joined the Groundwater Science Section at the Illinois State Water Survey. He will be working on the Illinois Department of Transportation project in the Metro East area. He is replacing Mark Anliker, who retired November 1, 2018.

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