Feature Article February 6, 2002
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Where has your well water been? - Part 1by Gray MerriamDrinking water probably has circled the earth more than once before you get it. It is not isolated in your well, or your lake, or your village.
Although filtering, chlorinating, and softening will treat the symptoms of bad drinking water, if you want to prevent your drinking water from going bad in the first place, you need to understand something about how your source of drinking water is connected to the ground water and to the other forms of water moving around on earth.
Water moves from the oceans, to the sky, to the rain, to the lakes, to underground water. There is a global water cycle that connects all the places where water occurs. Heat and gravity make the water move. Heat evaporates water from the oceans, which cover 70 percent of the earths surface. A lot of that water evaporated from the oceans falls on us as rain. It is a good thing, because without evaporation, all the water on the land would run off into the ocean and we would dry up. Water evaporates from lakes, rivers, and wet clothes on the line too, but the oceans produce most of our rain because they are much bigger. Trees and all other plants evaporate a lot of water by pumping it up and out through pores in their leaves.
When rain falls on the land, some of it will soak in if there is soil. Some of it will follow creeks into marshes and lakes, and then will either find a crack in the bedrock that lets it get into the groundwater, or it will run off into the rivers. If nothing stops it, water in rivers will be on its way back to the ocean.
We use water and then put it back into the cycle. Water from our septic systems and from our roads and ditches soaks into the soil or runs off the bedrock into lakes and rivers. Depending on the rock structure, the water we have used may find its way back into the groundwater and then into our wells. So we should care whether our septic systems work, and whether too much salt is used on our roads.
We take water out of the cycle directly as rainwater, or from lakes, or from our wells. Water in our wells is from rain that soaked into the soil, or from water in ponds or lakes that found a crack in the rock and seeped in, or from really old fossil water that has been deep underground for ages. All of this underground water is called groundwater, and it is where wells get their water.
Some of the water you drink from your well may have been in the Indian Ocean a few months ago and got to your place in rain, or it may have been in a lake 20 miles away last winter and found its way to your place through cracks in the rocks.
The Frontenac News plans to present three more water drops. The next drop will contrast wells up north on the granite with those to the south on limestone. Then we will look at how drought and pollution clearly show the connections between rain, your septic system, and your well. Finally we will talk about water as one of our most valuable resources. Keep track of your questions; there may be a way to get them discussed.
(Gray Merriam, a retired professional ecologist, is a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee.)
