Nov. 29, 2000—Toxic chemicals are contaminating groundwater on every inhabited continent, endangering the world's most valuable supplies of freshwater, reports a new study from the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, DC-based research organization.
This first global survey of groundwater pollution shows that a toxic brew of pesticides, nitrogen fertilizers, industrial chemicals, and heavy metals is fouling groundwater everywhere, and that the damage is often worst in the very places where people most need water.
"Groundwater contamination is an irreversible act that will deprive future generations of one of life's basic resources," said Payal Sampat, author of Deep Trouble: The Hidden Threat of Groundwater Pollution. "In the next 50 years, an additional 3 billion people are expected to inhabit the Earth, creating even more demand for water for drinking, irrigation, and industry. But we're polluting our cheapest and most easily accessible supply of water. Most groundwater is still pristine, but unless we take immediate action, clean groundwater will not be there when we need it."
Groundwater is an essential resource for sustaining civilization. Some 97 percent of the planet's liquid freshwater is stored in underground aquifers. Nearly one third of all humanity relies almost exclusively on groundwater for drinking, including the residents of some of the largest cities in the developing world, such as Jakarta, Dhaka, Lima, and Mexico City. Almost 99 percent of the rural U.S. population, and 80 percent of India's villagers, depend on groundwater for drinking.
Groundwater contamination is already widespread, from high levels of pesticides in wells in California's San Joaquin Valley to excessive nitrates in groundwater in 4 northern Chinese provinces. "One of the most disturbing aspects of the problem is that groundwater pollution is essentially permanent," said Sampat. Water recycles extremely slowly underground, too slowly to flush out or dilute toxic chemicals. Water that enters an aquifer remains there for an average of 1,400 years, compared to only 16 days for rivers. Thus Londoners, for example, may be drinking water that fell as rain as long ago as the last Ice Age.
Sampat calls for a systematic overhaul of manufacturing and industrial agriculture, citing examples of how farmers and factories are preventing groundwater pollution before it starts:
* Since 1998, farmers in China's Yunnan Province have eliminated their use of fungicides, while doubling rice yields, by planting more diverse varieties of the grain.
- Several water utilities in Germany now pay farmers to switch to organic operations because moving farmers to organic costs less than removing farm chemicals from water supplies.
- Companies are building "industrial symbiosis" parks in which the unusable wastes from one firm become the input for another. Such waste exchanges help an industrial park in Kalundborg, Denmark to keep more than 1.3 million tons of effluent out of landfills and septic systems each year.
For more information, visit the Worldwatch web site at www.worldwatch.org.
