Environmental Geology / 4th Stage Dr.

Kareem Khwedim

Water as a Resource

Water Quality
As noted earlier, most of the water in the hydrosphere is in the very salty
oceans, and almost all of the remainder is tied up in ice. That leaves
relatively little surface or subsurface water for potential freshwater
sources. Moreover, much of the water on and in the continents is not
strictly fresh. Even rainwater, long the standard for “pure” water, contains
dissolved chemicals of various kinds, especially in industrialized areas
with substantial air pollution. Once precipitation reaches the ground, it
reacts with soil, rock, and organic debris, dissolving still more chemicals
naturally, aside from any pollution generated by human activities. Water
quality thus must be a consideration when evaluating water supplies.

Measures of Water Quality

Water quality may be described in a variety of ways. A common
approach is to express the amount of a dissolved chemical substance
present as a concentration in parts per million (ppm) or, for very dilute
substances, parts per billion (ppb). For example, if water contains 1
weight percent salt, it contains one gram of salt per hundred grams of
water, or one ton of salt per hundred tons of water, or whatever unit one
wants to use. Likewise, if the water contains only 1 ppm salt, it contains
one gram of salt per million grams of water and so on. For comparison,
the most abundant dissolved constituents in seawater can be measured in
parts per thousand (magnesium, sulfate) or even percent (sodium,
chloride).
Another way to express overall water quality is in terms of total dissolved
solids (TDS), the sum of the concentrations of all dissolved solid
chemicals in the water. How low a level of TDS is required or acceptable
varies with the application. Standards might specify a maximum of 500 or
1000 ppm TDS for drinking water; 2000 ppm TDS might be acceptable
for watering livestock; industrial applications where water chemistry is
important (in pharmaceuticals or textiles, for instance) might need water
even purer than normal drinking water.
Yet describing water in terms of total content of dissolved solids does not
present the whole picture: At least as important as the quantities of
impurities present is what those impurities are. If the main dissolved
component is calcite (calcium carbonate) from a limestone aquifer, the
water may taste fine and be perfectly wholesome with well over 1000
ppm TDS in it. If iron or sulfur is the dissolved substance, even a few
parts per million may be enough to make the water taste bad, though it
may not be actually unhealthful. Many synthetic chemicals that have

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leaked into water through improper waste disposal are toxic even at
concentrations of 1 ppb or less.
Other parameters also may be relevant in describing water quality. One is
pH, which is a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of the water. The pH of
water is inversely related to acidity: the lower the pH, the more acid the
water. Water that is neither acid nor alkaline has a pH of 7.
For health reasons, concentrations of certain bacteria may also be
monitored in drinking-water supplies.
A water-quality concern recently close attention is the presence of
naturally occurring radioactive elements that may present a radiation
hazard to the water consumer. Uranium, which can be found in most
rocks, including those serving commonly as aquifers, decays through a
series of steps. Several of the intermediate decay products pose special
hazards. One—radium—behaves chemically much like calcium and
therefore tends to be concentrated in the body in bones and teeth.
Another—radon—is a chemically inert gas but is radioactive itself and
decays to other radioactive elements in turn. Radon leaking into indoor
air from water supplies contributes to indoor air pollution. High
concentrations of radium and/or radon in ground water may result from
decay of uranium in the aquifer itself or, in the case of radon, from
seepage out of adjacent uranium-rich aquifers, especially shales.

Hard Water
Aside from the issue of health, water quality may be of concern because
of the particular ways certain dissolved substances alter water properties.
In areas where water supplies have passed through soluble carbonate
rocks, like limestone, the water may be described as “hard.” Hard water
simply contains substantial amounts of dissolved calcium and
magnesium. When calcium and magnesium concentrations reach or
exceed the range of 80 to 100 ppm, the hardness may become
objectionable.

Water Use, Water Supply

Inspection of the U.S. water budget overall would suggest that ample
water is available for use. Some 4200 billion gallons of precipitation fall
on this country each day; subtracting 2750 billion gallons per day lost to
evapotranspiration still leaves a net of 1450 billion gallons per day for
stream flow and groundwater recharge. Water-supply problems arise, in
part, because the areas of greatest water availability do not always
coincide with the areas of concentrated population or greatest demand,
and also because a portion of the added fresh water quickly becomes
polluted by mixing with impure or contaminated water. People in the
United States use a large amount of water. Biologically, humans require

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about a gallon of water a day per person, or, in the United States, about
300 million gallons per day for the country. Yet, Americans divert, or
“withdraw,” about 400 billion gallons of water each day—about 1350
gallons per person—for cooking, washing, and other household uses, for
industrial processes and power generation, and for livestock and
irrigation, a wide range of “offstream” water uses. Another several
trillion gallons of water are used each day to power hydroelectric plants
“instream” use. Of the total water withdrawn, more than 100 billion
gallons per day are consumed, meaning that the water is not returned as
wastewater. Most of the consumed water is lost to evaporation; some is
lost in transport (for example, through piping systems).

Extending the Water Supply

Conservation
The most basic approach to improving the U.S. water-supply situation is
conservation. Water is wasted in home use every day—by long showers;
inefficient plumbing; insistence on lush, green lawns even in the heat of
summer; and in dozens of other ways. Raising livestock for meat requires
far more water per pound of protein than growing vegetables for protein.
Still, municipal and rural water uses (excluding irrigation) together
account for only about 10% of total U.S. water consumption. The big
water drain is irrigation, and that use must be moderated if the depletion
rate of water supplies is to be reduced appreciably. For example, the
raising of crops that require a great deal of water could be shifted, in
some cases at least, to areas where natural rainfall is adequate to support
them. Irrigation methods can also be made more efficient so that far less
water is lost by evaporation. This can be done, for instance, by drip
irrigation. Instead of running irrigation water in open ditches from which
evaporation loss is high, the water can be distributed via pipes with tiny
holes from which water seeps slowly into the ground at a rate more
closely approaching that at which plants use it. The more efficient
methods are often considerably more expensive, too. However, they have
become more attractive as water prices have been driven up by shortages.
As noted in the changes in government water policy could provide
incentives to conserve, especially with respect to ground water.
Domestic use can be reduced in a variety of ways. For example, lawns
can be watered morning or evening when evaporation is less rapid than at
midday; or one can for go traditional lawns altogether in favor of ground
covers that don’t need watering.
Storm water can be directed into recharge basins rather than dumped into
sewer systems. Increasingly, municipalities in dry areas are looking to
recycle their wastewater.

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Interbasin Water Transfer

In the short term, conservation alone will not resolve the imbalance
between demand and supply. New sources of supply are needed. Part of
the supply problem, of course, is local. For example, people persist in
settling and farming in areas that may not be especially well supplied
with fresh water, while other areas with abundant water go undeveloped.
If the people cannot be persuaded to be more practical, perhaps the water
can be redirected. This is the idea behind interbasin transfers—moving
surface waters from one stream system’s drainage basin to another’s
where demand is higher.
:‫مثال لالطالع‬
California pioneered the idea with the Los Angeles Aqueduct. The aqueduct was
completed in 1913 and carried nearly 150 million gallons of water per day from the
eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada to Los Angeles. In 1958, the system was expanded
to bring water from northern California to the southern part of the state. More and
larger projects have been undertaken since. Bringing water from the Colorado River
to southern coastal California, for example, required the construction of over 300
kilometers (200 miles) of tunnels and canals. Other water projects have transported
water over whole mountain ranges. It should be emphasized, too, that such projects
are not confined to the drier west: for example, New York City draws on several
reservoirs in upstate New York. If population density or other sources of water
demand are high, a local supply shortfall can occur even in an area thought of as quite
moist. Dozens of inter basin transfers of surface water have been proposed. Political
problems are common even when the transfer involves diverting water from one part
of a single state to another. In 1982, it was proposed to expand the aqueduct system to
carry water from northern California to the south; 60% of the voters in the southern
part of the state were in favor, but 90% of those in the north were opposed, and the
proposition lost. The opposition often increases when transfers among several states
are considered. In the 1990s, officials in states around the Great Lakes objected to a
suggestion to divert some lake water to states in the southern and southwestern United
States. The problems may be far greater when transfers between nations are involved.
Various proposals have been made to transfer water from little-developed areas of
Canada to high-demand areas in the United States and Mexico. Such proposals, which
could involve transporting water over distances of thousands of kilometers, are not
only expensive (one such scheme, the North American Water and Power Alliance,
had a projected price of $100 billion), they also presume a continued willingness on
the part of other nations to share their water. Sometimes, too, the diversion, in turn,
causes problems in the region from which the water is drawn.

Desalination
Another alternative for extending the water supply is to improve the
quality of waters not now used, purifying them sufficiently to make them
usable. Desalination of seawater, in particular, would allow parched
coastal regions to tap the vast ocean reservoirs. Also, some ground waters
are not presently used for water supplies because they contain excessive
concentrations of dissolved materials. There are two basic methods used
to purify water of dissolved minerals: filtration and distillation. In a
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filtration system, the water is passed through fine filters or membranes to

screen out dissolved impurities. An advantage of this method is that it can
rapidly filter great quantities of water. A large municipal filtration
operation may produce several billion gallons of purified water per day.
A disadvantage is that the method works best on water not containing
very high levels of dissolved minerals. Pumping anything as salty as
seawater through the system quickly clogs the filters. This method, then,
is most useful for cleaning up only moderately saline ground waters or
lake or stream water.
Distillation involves heating or boiling water full of dissolved minerals.
The water vapor driven off is pure water, while the minerals stay behind
in what remains of the liquid. Because this is true regardless of how
concentrated the dissolved minerals are, the method works fine on
seawater as well as on less saline waters.
A difficulty, however, is the nature of the necessary heat source. Furnaces
fired by coal, gas, or other fuels can be used, but any fuel may be costly
in large quantity, and many conventional fuels are becoming scarce. The
sun is an alternative possible heat source. Sunlight is free and
inexhaustible, and some solar desalination facilities already exist. Their
efficiency is limited by the fact that solar heat is low-intensity heat. If a
large quantity of desalinated water is required rapidly, the water to be
heated must be spread out shallowly over a large area, or the rate of water
output will be slow. A large city might need a solar desalination facility
covering thousands of square kilometers to provide adequate water, and
construction on such a scale would be expensive even if the space were
available. Desalinated water may be five to ten times more costly to
deliver than water pumped straight from a stream or aquifer. For most
homeowners, the water bill is a relatively minor expense, so a jump in
water costs, if necessitated by the use of desalinated water, would not be
a great hardship. Water for irrigation, however, must be both plentiful and
cheap if the farmer is to compete with others here and abroad who need
not irrigate and if the cost of food production is to be held down.
Desalinated water in most areas is prohibitively expensive for irrigation
use. Unless ways can be found to reduce drastically the cost of
desalinated water.

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Environmental Geology / 4th Stage Dr. Kareem Khwedim

Questions for Review

1. Explain three characteristics used to describe water quality.

2. What is hard water, and why is it often considered undesirable?
3. Industry is the big water user, but agriculture is the big water consumer. Explain.
4. Compare and contrast filtration and distillation as desalination methods, noting
advantages and drawbacks of each.