|
Water is Used
today as never before. Consider a typical day:
- When you wake up, you're probably thirsty and you get something to drink.
(A glass of water perhaps?)
- Need to wash up? You can't do that without getting wet.
- Time to get dressed? There's no question that water was used in making your clothes. Ditto on shoes.
- Hungry? Food takes a surprising amount of water to produce.
- Off to work, school, or play? How do you get there? Car, bus, train? Bicycle? Inline skates?
Think about the products, the packaging, the fuel and you'll realize that water's involved...
Check out
these amazing
statistics on the amount of water that goes into creating some of the products we use.
Everyday Life
uses water in many unthought of ways. Many activities that use water affect the watershed, and that can have an impact on water quality AND on life in rivers and streams.
It's important to recognize that rivers and streams are more than just sources of water for people to use. Each is a unique "ecosystem" that supports an amazing web of life. When pollution gets into a river or stream,
it can upset the aquatic ecosystem and affect the balance of life.
Whatever gets into a waterway--even if it's motor oil thrown down a storm drain or excess fertilizers washed off a lawn--has the
potential to affect the normal function of the ecosystem. Pollutants can impact the way bacteria eat and how insects reproduce. Pollutants can even create zones of little or no oxygen that prevent fish from swimming upstream.
Water Pollution
can be caused by something as natural as stormwater runoff in a wilderness area populated by deer. It can also be caused by accidents such as oil spills,
or by the careless use of things in our homes. Laws like the
Clean Water Act have been very important in helping clean up the most obvious large scale water pollution problems,
but people are beginning to realize that high quality fresh water is something that can no longer be taken for granted. We also have to recognize that each one of us can affect
water quality and we should do our part to help keep it clean.
To learn what you can do for the watershed, check out Things You Can Do.
|
Watersheds
> Water Use