What do you know about drinking water?
Take the quiz at the bottom!
It’s Drinking Water Week – a time to remember where your drinking water comes from, what the threats to your drinking water are, and what you can do about them.
Despite today’s problems, public drinking water has come a long way. It wasn’t so long ago – a little over a century – when large numbers of residents of Michigan and other states died from poor drinking water.
In those days, before chlorine disinfection and pollution prevention attacked the sources of drinking water contamination, cholera and typhoid claimed hundreds of Michigan lives annually. Many communities dumped untreated sewage into rivers – upstream from intakes for public drinking water systems. The Detroit River was a sewer, and downriver communities took in much of that waste and delivered it to water customers.
Raw sewage isn’t a major source of drinking
Typhoid Fever under the microscope
water contamination today, but other threats persist. Chemicals like PFAs and inorganic pollutants like nitrates are showing up in private water wells around Michigan. In localized areas, naturally occurring radium and chlorides are a problem.
While Michigan, like other states, has programs designed to monitor public water supplies and assure they comply with the federal and state Safe Drinking Water Acts, staff and budgets fall well short of the need. A consultant’s study found that the Michigan state government is almost 200 employees and $45.4 million short of what it needs in order to protect drinking water supplies,
A deep look down a well during construction
During Drinking Water Week, filling knowledge gaps is a critical priority. Knowing the source of your drinking water is crucial, and so is knowing about threats to its safety and legal and environmental defenses to prevent its contamination. Governor Whitmer has also proclaimed Thursday, May 8, as Private Residential Well Awareness Day in order to bring attention to Michiganders who depend on private wells for their drinking water.
Private residential well owners face different threats than those who are connected to public water systems. Private well owners are responsible for testing the safety of their supplies.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that private well users have their well water tested annually for contaminants. The CDC also recommends keeping household hazardous materials such as paint, fertilizer, pesticides, and motor oil far away from wells.
Customers of public water supplies are entitled to receive annual consumer confidence reports that detail levels of contaminants and any violations of drinking water standards.
Many Michiganders drink bottled water—some as a short-term replacement for contaminated public or private water supplies, but far more do so for the perceived convenience and hydration. Many bottled water customers, however, do not realize that a lot of bottled water comes from public supplies—so they are drinking bottled tap water from systems paid for by taxpayers and marked up for significant profit by the private sector. Aquafina and Dasani labels in Michigan are drawn from the public supply for Southeast Michigan. And most of the remainder of bottled water packaged in Michigan—such as BlueTriton’s (formerly Nestle’s)—comes from groundwater that is tributary to Michigan’s streams and lakes. In effect, the water and resulting corporate profits come from a resource that belongs to the people of Michigan under the public trust doctrine.
We should not take our drinking water for granted. Being aware of sources and threats is crucial to our individual, family, and public health. Learn more about FLOW’s efforts to protect groundwater here on our website.
What do you know about water?
How many Michigan residents rely on private drinking water wells?
B. 800,000
C. 2.6 million
D. 4.5 million
In scientific studies, researchers have found that samples of bottled water contained:
B. Volatile organic compounds C. Arsenic, lead and uranium
D. Byproducts of chlorine disinfection
At how many contamination sites in Michigan is it against the law to drill a new drinking water well?
D. About 5000
How much public money will it cost to clean up all abandoned groundwater contamination sites in MI?
B. $2 billion
C. $4 billion
D. $13 billion
What is the contaminant that led to the most violations of chemical standards in public water supplies?
B. Arsenic
C. Nitrates
D. Sodium
