Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Natural Gas Wells Contaminate Water
Chemicals getting released into water systems is a wide-spread problem. Whether it be from heavy metals, pesticides, or industrial waste, the contamination of drinking water is a problem that effects everyone. Recently, hundreds of people were evacuated from their homes in northwest Louisiana after natural gas seeped into the water supply from a near-by natural gas drilling site. The news story that shows further details of this contamination can be found on this link. I find this incident incredibly disturbing. I generally take having safe drinking water for granted and just assume that the water supply provided by San Diego will not be harmful. However, after reading about how some harmful chemicals are beyond water purification plant's detection abilities and finding this story about a town that had to be evacuated due to, what it seems to be, carelessness on the part of the company drilling for natural gas, I am increasingly skeptical about how safe our water actually is.
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That is definitely a distubring accident. Something that might make you feel better about San Diego water is the hardness of it. If you compare the hardness of our drinking water to that of the rest of the country, you will find that the calcium and magnesium content of SD tap water is quite high. So far, there seems to be no ill effects from drinking hard water over a prolonged period of time...some researchers even suggest that it's a good thing and contributes to our daily dietary needs of Ca and Mg.
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