Water Pollution

Water Resources

Water resources are sources of water that are useful or potentially useful to humans. Uses of water include agricultural, industrial, household, recreational and environmental activities. Virtually all of these human uses require fresh water. 88.7% of water on the Earth is salt water, and over two thirds of fresh water is frozen in glaciers and polar ice caps, leaving only 0.9% available for human use

Sources of Fresh Water
•Surface Water is water in a river, lake or fresh water wetland. Surface water is naturally replenished by precipitation and naturally lost through discharge to the oceans, evaporation, and sub-surface seepage.

•Sub-Surface water, or groundwater, is fresh water located in the pore space of soil and rocks. It is also water that is flowing within aquifers below the water table. Sometimes it is useful to make a distinction between sub-surface water that is closely associated with surface water and deep sub-surface water in an aquifer (sometimes called "fossil water").

Water Stress

According to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development - It applies to situations where there is not enough water for all uses, whether agricultural, industrial or domesticPopulation growth
Causes of Water Stress

Population Growth
Increased affluence.

Expansion of business activity.
Rapid urbanization
Climate change
Depletion of aquifers

Water Conservation and Management

Water conservation refers to reducing use of fresh water, through technological or social methods. Water conservation is an integral part of water management. The goals of water conservation efforts include:
•Sustainability - To ensure availability for future generations, the withdrawal of fresh water from an ecosystem should not exceed its natural replacement rate.
•Energy conservation - Water pumping, delivery, and wastewater treatment facilities consume a significant amount of energy. In some regions of the world (for example, California ) over 15% of total electricity consumption is devoted to water management.
•Habitat conservation - Minimizing human water use helps to preserve fresh water habitats for local wildlife and migrating waterfowl, as well as reducing the need to build new dams and other water diversion infrastructure.

Solutions for Water Conservation

•Social Awareness
•Technical Solutions
•Reclaimed water, sometimes called recycled water, is former wastewater (sewage) that has been treated and purified for reuse, rather than discharged into a body of water. E.g Rain water harvesting
•Watershed management
• Catchment management

Water Pollution

•Water pollution is a large set of adverse effects upon water bodies such as lakes, rivers, oceans, and groundwater caused by human activities.
•Surface water pollution

Although natural phenomena such as volcanoes, algae blooms, storms, and earthquakes also cause major changes in water quality and the ecological status of water, water is only called polluted when it is not able to be used for what one wants it to be used for.

•Ground water pollution
This pollution is much more difficult to abate than surface pollution because groundwater can move great distances through unseen aquifers. Non-porous aquifers such as clays partially purify water of bacteria by simple filtration (adsorption and absorption), dilution, and, in some cases, chemical reactions and biological activity: however, in some cases, the pollutants merely transform to soil contaminants. Groundwater that moves through cracks and caverns is not filtered and can be transported as easily as surface water. In fact, this can be aggravated by the human tendency to use natural sinkholes as dumps in areas of Karst topography

Contaminants

•Contaminants are of two types - Organic and inorganic
•Some inorganic water pollutants include:
•Heavy metals including acid mine drainage
•Acidity caused by industrial discharges (especially sulfur dioxide from power plants)
•Pre-production industrial raw resin pellets, an industrial pollutant
•Chemical waste as industrial by products
•Fertilizers, in runoff from agriculture including nitrates and phosphates
•Silt in surface runoff from construction sites, logging, slash and burn practices or land clearing sites


Some organic water pollutants are:
•Insecticides and herbicides, a huge range of organohalide and other chemicals
•Bacteria, often is from sewage or livestock operations
•Food processing waste, including pathogens
•Tree and brush debris from logging operations
•VOCs (volatile organic compounds), such as industrial solvents, from improper storage
•DNAPLs (dense non-aqueous phase liquids), such as chlorinated solvents, which may fall at the bottom of reservoirs, since they don't mix well with water and are more dense
•Petroleum Hydrocarbons including fuels (gasoline, diesel, jet fuels, and fuel oils) and lubricants (motor oil) from oil field operations, refineries, pipelines, retail service station's underground storage tanks, and transfer operations. Note: VOCs include gasoline-range hydrocarbons.

•Detergents

Action Plan for Rivers: National River Conservation Plan (NRCP)

In 1995 this plan was first launched. Under this all the rivers in India were taken up for clean up operations. This plan covers 18 rivers in 10 states including 46 towns .
Those stretches of rivers that are badly polluted were included in the NRCP. NRCP, more than being a river cleaning programme, is a long-term plan that would eventually lead to conservation of rivers. The project is entirely funded by the Central Government.
Objective : NRCP essentially addresses pollution load from sewer systems of town and cities and works towards intercepting and diverting sewage, setting up STPs, electric crematoria, low-cost sanitation, river front development, afforestation and solid waste management.
Various River Action Plans:

•Ganga action Plan
•Yamuna Action Plan
•Gomti Action Plan
•Damodar Action Plan