Groundwater in Illinois

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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.
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.
Thermal Pollution

Oct 28, 2016 10:15 am3170 views

In surface water, temperature is an important water quality parameter affecting aquatic organisms, and a recently published paper has looked at the magnitude of thermal pollution in many river basins throughout the world.
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.
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.
Water from Where? The Complex Web of Water Use in Illinois

Nov 6, 2017 3:45 pm2212 views

Scientists at the Illinois Water Survey have developed an interactive map of where every community in Illinois gets their water from.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sodium and Drinking Water

Apr 5, 2013 3:45 pm1069 views

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.
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.
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:
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%!
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
Plastic Debris and Human Health

Jul 5, 2016 9:45 am521 views

A recent viewpoint in the journal Environmental Science & Technology suggests that persistent plastic debris may be an important health issue for humans. We’ve known for a long time that aquatic animals are vulnerable to plastic pollution.
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.
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.
Microplastics in Table Salt

Nov 19, 2015 2:30 pm500 views

These are plastic debris smaller than 5 mm in diameter, and there’s a lot of it in the ocean. Now comes a report that we may be ingesting microplastics through sea salt.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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)
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.
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.
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.
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?
Shade Balls

Aug 13, 2015 4:15 pm330 views

I think this a really cool low-tech idea: black plastic balls added to Los Angeles’s largest reservoir to prevent algal blooms and limit evaporation.
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.
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
The Private Well Class, Five Years in the Making

Oct 2, 2017 4:45 pm315 views

Staff at the University of Illinois developed a 10-lesson online class, the Private Well Class, for homeowners with private wells to learn how to properly care for their water well.
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.
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.
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.

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