Water Quality is Everyone’s Concern

Most of us don’t give it a second thought. We grab a glass, turn on the faucet, and get a refreshing, cool drink. We assume that water is plentiful and drinkable.

This isn’t always the case. In 2004, Washington, D.C.’s drinking water was contaminated with lead from the city’s aging water infrastructure. According to the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC), most of the pipes that caused the contamination were still in use in 2021. Flint, Michigan, experienced a dangerous spike in lead levels in 2016 because the city switched water providers without maintaining the passive ortho-phosphate protection required to prevent contamination from water pipes. It was months before their drinking water was safe to consume. The city was still working this year to replace old lead water pipes that service residents. A failure of the water treatment plant in Jackson, Mississippi, resulted in a boil order from August 2022 to January 2023. Failures in our drinking water systems can happen anywhere at any time. Residents must pay attention to the water quality in our communities and understand how it is maintained.

The students enrolled in General Chemistry I at Riverland are learning how drinking water is treated, accessing the water quality reports from their water providers, and testing the drinking water from their homes in the lab to ensure it meets applicable standards. They are also researching instances like those in Washington, D.C.; Flint; and Jackson to understand how their drinking water became unsafe and the health and financial impact on residents. The goal is that these students learn how to access publically available data about their communities, understand the processes necessary to maintain clean drinking water, and take action as informed consumers when necessary.

Even if your water provider is treating the water properly at their facility, it’s still essential to understand how water is transported from their facility to your tap. According to a 2008 article published in the American Journal of Public Health, while some cities stopped using lead pipes in the 1920s, national plumbing codes allowed for the use of lead pipes into the 1970s and 1980s. Many water systems based their regulations on these codes. If lead pipes are used in the community, the water provider must take additional steps to ensure lead doesn’t leach into the drinking water. For example, Flint treated its water with orthophosphate, which created a protective layer in the pipes to prevent lead from leaching into the drinking supply. Lead contamination in their water supply didn’t reach dangerous levels until after the water was no longer treated with orthophosphates and the passive layer broke down.

So, what can you do to ensure your drinking water is safe? Public attention and involvement is the first step to ensuring our drinking water stay safe. Below is how you can be involved: