It has been known for quite a while that our water is polluted with pharmaceuticals. Here is a story giving more details on the issue. The drugs pass through humans, farm animals, and even our pets and get into our sewage systems, rivers and aquifers. Yes, everything from hormones to antibiotics to cholesterol-lowering drugs to pharmaceuticals for heart and mental health, and in many places around the world, not just in the United States. Also, don’t expect your bottled water to be free from contamination, because it’s just now being lightly tested for in our water supplies, and no method has been developed to remove them yet. The quantities are small, but, scientists simply do not know the long-term effects of being exposed to these drugs on a daily basis. They do know the harmful effects of amphibians being exposed to certain feminizing hormones, the defects in the males being born to these species. We’d better get cracking!

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It seems that the French have their own water problems, just like we do here all over the United States. The Rhone river is apparently in very bad shape, especially when it comes to the level of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the river, and in the fish that swim in it. The government has forbidden fish harvest for human consumption because the level of PCBs found in them is 10-12 times the safe limit. The government also had a hand in this, as it ran an industrial waste processing center on the Rhone’s banks, called Tredi, and dumped PCBs directly into the river. Trust no one, not the government (any of them), not corporations or businesses. If you really want to know if your water is safe, or if your fish has toxins in it, get the stuff tested yourself, and then, you have a chance of knowing. The high level of PCBs in the Rhone was discovered by a local fisherman, who sent some of his fish off to be tested as a ‘just in case’ sort of thing, and wound up inadvertently eliminating his livelihood.

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Below is a link to a photo tour of disappearing lakes. They are very precious sources of fresh water for humans and wildlife, and they are all slowly draining away to nothingness. The leftover mud and silt is often polluted with chemicals and farm runoff.

• Disappearing Lakes

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Russ Feingold (D-WI) is at it again, thank goodness. Actually, it’s Feingold, along with Oberstar (D-MN), Dingell (D-MI) and Ehlers (R-MI), that have introduced the ‘Clean Water Restoration Act of 2007′. This act is in response to all of the damage that the Bush Administration has done to the ‘Clean Water Act’ in reducing or eliminating protection measures for streams, watersheds, and wetlands in the American southwest such as playas and desert springs. These are all vital sources of water for wildlife, and and people, and are, like many other natural resources, under attack by the Bush Administration by allowing industry to pollute and overuse them.

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NASA has released a new study that concludes that the weight of glacial sediments washed into the Mississippi Delta Valley is causing the coastal shelf to sink between 0.1 to 0.8 centimeters per year. The additional factors of sediment compaction and oxidation, and the pumping of water and oil have added approximately 0.3 centimeters per year to the glacial sediment effect. Add the future rise in the Gulf level due to climate change, and you have a quickly disappearing coastline.

• The Sinking of Coastal Louisiana

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Another water contamination even in San Francisco Bay. The poor bay just can’t get a break, can it?

• Pooped San Francisco Bay

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Here is an interesting and very informative article on water usage, specifically, how Americans in certain regions of the United States, especially the  west will have to adjust to getting their drinking water from treated sewage water. It has been happening for a while in Texas and Virginia, and in the country of Namibia, Africa, and it is about to happen in Orange County, California. Some studies indicate that the treated sewage water is of a higher quality than water garnered from a “fresh” source, and that there are fewer contaminants to worry about, including bacteria and hormones and pharmaceuticals. These things go in one end and get excreted out the other, right? Other things to worry about in water include agricultural run-off which includes fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides and industrial run-off which includes all kinds of things, including heavy metals. Some studies by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicate that the treated water sewage water is better than that obtained by water allowed to percolate through a natural aquifer, as the water tends to pick up pollutants (man-made and otherwise) along the way. I don’t know, I guess a battery of tests will have to be done from a range of trustworthy sources to fully convince me that they are able to get all of the human-excreted hormones and pharmaceuticals out of the water supply. I do worry about that.   Unfortunately, desalination at this point is very expensive, energy intensive, and environmentally insensitive (couldn’t resist).  Just like the organisms that get exterminated in the cooling water for nuclear power plants, desalination would have an adverse affect on the flora and fauna in oceans.

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One of the two favorite subjects of this blog is conservation and water, so we get to do two for the price of one today. The drought in the southern United States is very bad these last few years (see the blog entry on Atlanta, Georgia), and it looks like it may be even worse in 2008, if something big in the precipitation department doesn’t come their way. Yes, for the skeptics, droughts do happen naturally, but, come on, it’s pretty much common knowledge that most Americans don’t conserve water, or energy for that matter. We embrace profligate waste, and the only time we begrudgingly consider being more modest with water and energy is if we are absolutely forced to do so. This usually means that the price goes up, and we try a little, but so most of us haven’t been really challenged with respect to our usage to the point where we radically change our lifestyle in order to get by. I believe most Americans simply do not want to contemplate the idea that our natural resources aren’t infinite, or that a very convenient technological fix won’t come along and give us everything we need, and fix all of our environmental damage as a side benefit. We want to believe in a miracle. Well, we shall see, but meanwhile, extinctions are happening, and they are significant, so that miracle has to come very, very soon.

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A new paper has been published on the subject of stream restoration. The paper will most likely change the way stream restoration will occur in the future, because it adds to the understanding of the way water flows naturally across the continent. In the past, scientists concluded that water flows in a ribbon-like pattern, cutting through silt-filled banks. The new study takes into account the fact that the old studies were basing part of their conclusions on man-made artifacts, not natural stream patterns. These man-made artifacts are silty areas caused by dams built in the 1700s. Dams were very common back then and were built for typical economic reasons such as to have a grist mill. The dams caused silt to build up behind them, and long after the dams were no longer maintained and failed, the silty banks through which the newly-freed streams ran were left behind to influence their course.

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As this blog is heavily concentrated toward conservation and the natural world, I’m always looking around for good blogs to read that share the same interests and will help keep me up to date on the whole spectrum of conservation. The following link is to a blog that concentrates on river restoration, a very important subject, for our rivers are in great need of rehabilitation. The blog also linked to one of my write-ups, so I thought I would share the love.

• Restoring Rivers Blog

Here is another site that focuses on the state of health of our American rivers:

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