By
Eve Wackett
The Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) has recently launched an ad campaign to help
the nation prepare for a terrorist attack. The Web site,
www.ready.gov,
lists water
first among the items necessary to prepare for an emergency.
Fresh water is becoming a very coveted resource. A Feb 21
article from The Middle East Media Research Institute,
written by the senior analyst of MEMRI's Middle East Economic
Studies Program, Nimrod Raphaeli titled,
“The
Looming Crisis of Water in the Middle East,” discusses
strategic commodities and how water is as important
as oil.
How safe is our water?
The Erie
County Water Authority (ECWA) and the City of
Buffalo Water Authority are two of the 399 large
public drinking water facilities to receive a federal grant
for $115,000 to conduct an assessment of vulnerability in
the event of a terrorist attack or other man-made threat.
(http://www.epa.gov/OGWDW/
security/large_grants/list.html)
Several amendments have been made to the Safe
Drinking Water Act (SDWA) with the
Public Health Security and Bio-terrorism Preparedness
and Response Act of 2002 (http://www.epa.gov/OGWDW/
security/security_act.pdf) to prepare the community
water providers funds for vulnerability assessment and emergency
response plans in the event of a terrorist attack against
public water supplies. More still needs to be done according
to American
Water Works Association.
Improvements to the nation's water and wastewater
infrastructures will cost about $260 billion over the next
20 years, according to the Environmental Protection
Agency (http://www.unitedwater.com/municpal.htm).
President Bush has only proposed $34 million
in his budget for the EPA to clean up the Great
Lakes. The EPA faces one of the smallest increases
of any federal agency - (http://ens-news.com/ens/feb2003/2003-02-04-10.asp).
The Great Lakes is one of the largest sources
of fresh water in the world. The main source of drinking
water for Buffalo including Buffalo State
College comes from Lake Erie. The drinking
water is deemed safe to drink through the process of filtration
conducted at water treatment plants.
ECWA has expended more than $1 million to
upgrade the security systems, including video surveillance,
fencing and gates, security alarms, and a state of the art
Microtox testing system.
Brian Gould, public affairs
officer for the ECWA says the assessment has been complete
and after a final review documents will be forwarded to
the EPA:
“The safety and quality of ECWA water
is being aggressively protected,” he said.
“The ECWA’s system is very secure
and we have an emergency plan in place if an incident were
to occur locally either of an accident or deliberate nature.”
The water is tested several times and in
several locations throughout the city, according to City
of Buffalo Annual Water Report. Buffalo’s water
system is separate from ECWA but comes from the same source.
(http://www.ci.buffalo.ny.us/
document_1176.html)
The Buffalo water report states Lake
Erie is known as the “Emerald Channel”
because of the “sparkling clarity” of the water.
But consider this:
An environmental science textbook from 1998
states, Lake Erie is perhaps the “most polluted”
of the Great Lakes because Lake Erie is the shallowest,
the smallest and most densely populated. Lake Erie drains
Lake Superior, Lake Huron,
and Lake Michigan before heading down the
Niagara River to Lake Ontario
and out to sea.
Efforts to clean the Great Lakes through the
Clean
Water Act established in 1972 have contributed to the
clarity of the water. The CWA
was intended to ``restore and maintain the chemical, physical,
and biological integrity of the Nation's waters.'' {33
U.S.C. 1251(a)} The
Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) established in 1974 helps
to monitor and set standards for drinking water.
The EPA sets standards for 145 regulated contaminants in
drinking water. For each of these contaminants, EPA sets
a legal limit, called a maximum contaminant level (MCL).
(Erie
County Water Quality Report 2001)
Zebra mussels have also helped clean the
water. Yet the mussels may be the main contributors to some
of the problems the lake is facing today:
- Increased phosphorus levels
- Type E botulism outbreaks in marine and avian life
- Lack of oxygen, “The
Dead Zone” in Lake Erie
Is the water cleaner?
National
Public Water Systems Compliance Report for New York
lists over 1,000 violations for the year 2000. The agency's
most recent water quality report, issued in 2000, showed
the percentage of assessed waters that were polluted had
increased to 45 percent from 40 percent in 1998, and there
is no clear indication of whether this has been reversed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/
02/23/science/23ENVI.html
The State
of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference (SOLEC) 2002
report states only one use of the Great
Lakes is assessed to be in “good” shape. The
SOLEC report says, “in large part due to
our [treatment] technologies” our drinking water quality
is in good shape. The state of our lakes according to the
report is “mixed-deteriorating.” Great
Lakes United executive director Margaret
Wooster’s comments can be accessed at: (click
here).
For more water related information see the following links:
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