Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
led Pennsylvania to declare a drought warning in 24 of its counties,
and a drought watch for another 43 counties.
The western Great Lakes, says Sandia's Hightower, including
Minnesota and Illinois, and Ohio along Lake Erie have their own water
issues. They face population growth and development, limited aqui-
fer supplies, drainage patterns that preclude pulling water from the
nearby Great Lakes (because what you take out generally has to be put
back into the same drainage basin), and laws relating to water rights.
In December 2008, the Ontario (Canada) Ministry of the Environment
accused the city of Detroit of stealing water from the Windsor, Ontario,
side of the border, a practice it claims has been going on since 1964.
Areas of the Great Lakes Basin—the lakes and the area
surrounding them—including parts of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan,
Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and the
Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec—are facing water con-
fl icts, agrees USGS's Evenson: “As you move farther away from the
lake shores, where people are using aquifers/groundwater, you can
fi nd areas of confl icts, where either there is not a lot of [water] or
moving water out of the basin raises concerns.”
Across the country, antiquated infrastructure contributes to
more water supplies washing away. That infrastructure includes
crumbling water-delivery systems—think water main breaks—and
outdated storm sewers and drainage systems that leach huge amounts
of freshwater out of aquifers and carry it away as “waste” water.
Leaking pipes lose an estimated 7 billion gallons of clean drink-
ing water every day, according to the “2009 Report Card for America's
Infrastructure,” from the American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Suburban sprawl, which creates impervious surfaces like
pavement, parking lots, buildings, and roofs, adds to the runoff.
Data from a 2002 study by the nonprofi ts American Rivers, Natural
Resources Defense Council, and Smart Growth America,
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paint
a grim picture of billions of gallons of freshwater that used to soak
into the ground and now runs off and away from major metropoli-
tan areas in the United States. This lost infi ltration ranges from a low
of between 6.2 billion and 14.4 billion gallons a year in Dallas, to
a high of between 56.9 billion and 132.8 billion gallons annually in
Atlanta. The Atlanta runoff in 1997 alone was enough water to sup-
ply the average daily household needs of 1.5 million to 3.6 million
people for a year! You can read more about this study in Chapter 3.
