Gateway

Issue date: 9/11/09 Section: News

courtesy [Click to enlarge]

courtesy [Click to enlarge]

Benjamin Franklin once said, "When the well's dry, we know the worth of water."

Water is one of the most essential substances for living, and the need to protect drinking water supply sources in the United States is more apparent than ever.

Chi Sham, vice-president of The Cadmus Group in Boston, Mass., spoke to more than a dozen students and faculty members on Sept. 4 about how state and local communities can protect their drinking water supply sources.

Sham's lecture titled "The Role of Geography in Protecting Drinking Water Supply Sources in the U.S." was part of the UNO Department of Geography/Geology's lecture series held in Durham Science Center.

Sham - who heads the Drinking Water and Water Quality Division at Cadmus - began his presentation with the implementation source water assessments, which were mandated under the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1996.

Sham said the state is responsible for completing a source water assessment, which provides important information about the potential risks posed to drinking water. These assessments are also vital for prioritizing protection activities.

As part of the assessment, the state must undergo delineation, compile a contamination source inventory and develop a susceptibility analysis.

"You go out and find all of the drinking water supply sources and see how vulnerable that particular source is," Sham said. "Most of the septic systems don't treat chemical, they treat human waste to some extent."

The ongoing problem of drinking water contamination varies based on geographical region.

"If your in the east…the type of contamination you see is going to be very different as compared to moving out here in Nebraska or Iowa," Sham said. "Most of the contamination related to groundwater tends to be more culturally oriented, when in the east it tends to be more industrial-oriented."

Sham said public awareness - the final step in the assessment - is key to prevent drinking water contamination.

"If you know where you're getting your water from, you will probably be more careful about disposing waste [and] about contamination," he said. "The whole concept is that we're trying to give power to the general public."

Sept. 11 posed a problem for instating public awareness, as the state and federal governments were shady about releasing the sources of drinking water.

Sham said each state has a different mindset, though.

Most states completed their assessments in 2003. Now, the Environmental Protection Agency wants to direct its attention to water protection efforts, which do not include federal regulation.

Sham said the goal of source water protection is to minimize public health risks for 50 percent of the community water systems and by for the associated 62 percent of the population served by the systems.

"You really want to be preventive, rather than reactional," he said.

A preventative approach toward protecting drinking water supply sources is to understand that no news is good news.

"If you didn't hear that Omaha's drinking water is a problem, that's good," Sham said. "People are doing their job and the water is safe. When you start hearing there is a problem, generally that means someone isn't following up."

Sham said geography plays a vital role in initiating protective drinking water strategies. Geography, for example, is used to examine hydrologic responses from land use and associate contaminants responsible for groundwater pollution.

"It's more of an approach than it actually is a discipline," Sham said. "History gives you a sense of time, geography gives you a sense of place."

Geography is most useful in environmental consulting, especially when speaking with economists, engineers and geologists. It is also used to develop and implement preventative and mitigating approaches to protect source water, such as land-use management and pollution prevention, Sham said.

Source water protection also requires an interdisciplinary approach, such as economic and financial assessment.

Although the U.S. public water system is doing well, Sham said public health is still a serious concern.

"What is your life worth?" Sham said. "You really can't put a number on life."

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