Water: of any of Earth’s elements this is the most abundant on our planet, yet this abundant element is scarce and threatened. Rachel Carson, the author of the renowned book Silent Spring, summarized this dilemma the best, “Of all our natural resources water has become the most precious. By far the greater part of the earth’s surface is covered by its enveloping seas, yet in the midst of this plenty we are in want” (39). As Carson describes here, we need an increasing amount of water every year, specifically for our agriculture, industry, and population, but as a result of these uses we are causing unknown amounts of damage that we have begun to recognize and are now beginning to correct.
Since 1962 when Silent Spring was published, humanity has slowly to redefine the true value of water. With the nearly 50 years of research into the environment on Earth we have discovered much about how water works, how connected it is, and how to now couple both human technology with nature’s technologies to create a symbiosis that can carry humanity into the future. Since Carson blew the whistle with Silent Spring in 1962, humanity has listened and made the necessary changes to reduce its effect on the environment and its water ways, but now it stands on the brink of its future with a new understanding that will carry it into the future. Humanity is finally finding a way to intertwine the technologies of nature with its technology to create ways to clean and protect its most precious resource, water; these can be seen through examples like the renovation of Ford’s Rough River plant or through concept cities proposed to the Chinese government that have a nearly zero impact on the local environment of the proposed locations. All of these realizations have come as a result of Carson’s conclusions in Silent Spring.
As Linda Lear describes in the introduction of Silent Spring, Carson’s beginnings were not in science but in writing. She showed early talent with her first publication at the age of ten. Nature had always captured her curiosity and when a zoology professor in college pushed her to major in biology over English, she did so. In this she found that this science “gave her ‘something to write about’” (Lear xi) and she pursued science, knowing that there were few opportunities for women in the field during the 1930s. She completed her M.A. In zoology in 1932 but could not afford to move on and complete her Ph.D. With her career job as an editor at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service beginning in 1937 and by 1949 she was the service’s editor in chief.
Carson always took a stand against environmental pollution and her passion finally culminated in her last and likely most influential writing, Silent Spring (Lear). This book challenged the government and corporations, exposing the results of the chemicals being allowed into in the environment. With Carson’s already praised approach of presenting the natural world through the written word, Silent Spring caught the attention of many. In fact, so much attention that the corporations spent a quarter million dollars to discredit her, calling her a “hysterical woman” and a “spinster” (Lear xvii). Her ideas about the relationship between the environment and humanity was a revolutionary step in scientific thinking (Lear xvi). What Carson revealed within her book is how water is connected in many unseen ways throughout the natural world.
Water is a chemical, a substance, a unique thing to our Earth, a solid, a vapor, a liquid, and it is alive. It is debated, fought over, traded and abundant. As the Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics describes, in both liquid and solid forms it is the most abundant substance on this planet humanity inhabits, covering about 71% of the surface area of our planet and it is a major cornerstone of the life that inhabits it (Hussein 2051).
As Kenneth M. Vigil, a long time environmental engineer with over 20 years experience and author of Clean Water, explains, the chemical makeup of water is represented by the well known chemical name H2O represents the bonding of two elements, hydrogen and oxygen. These are both gases when they are not bonded together to make water, but this chemical bond creates the unique matter that changes form based on the surrounding temperature and pressure. When liquid water is cooled, it becomes denser than warm water, yet when it is frozen the molecules expand making it just slightly lighter than its liquid form. From this currents in lakes are formed when the surface water cools and sinks to the bottom causing the warmer water to rise. This also is how an ice cube floats in a glass of water or icebergs float in the ocean (Vigil 25).
As Virgil describes, water is chemically neutral, which means on the pH scale it should rate near or at 7.0. The pH scale is a 14 point scale to show the condition of liquids where the lower the number, the more acidic the liquid is and the higher the number the more alkaline the solution is (Vigil 30). Because of water’s unique chemical bonds and its neutrality on the pH scale, solids, liquids, and gases can dissolve into it very easily, even metals such as copper or lead can dissolve into water (Hussein 2051, Vigil 25). Due to this ability, streams and rivers pick up sediment and chemicals on their way to the ocean, which means the more that is added into the river flowing by, the more that appears in the drinking water, the rain, and the fishing grounds where humanity finds food (Vigil 25).
This may seem surprising that what is put into the river can come back in the rain, but this principal can be explained through the hydrologic cycle. Vigil describes this cycle as the process in which “water moves from the ocean to the land and back to the ocean again continuously” (Vigil 7). This cycle brings water from the ocean through evaporation and as the clouds cool the water falls in either rain or snow (Hussein 2051).
As Vigil mentions, if there was a way to follow a rain drop from it falling from the sky, all the way back to ocean, we could travel many different ways. We may travel through the ground, meeting up with other raindrops and flowing slowly through the ground back to the ocean. We may travel down a cliff face, into a stream that meets up with a river and then flow back into the ocean that way, and still there are many other ways we may reach the ocean only to again evaporate and fall through this entire cycle again. The process of evaporation leaves behind solid minerals and sediments which is why the ocean is salty, but what does evaporate with the water are the “volatile compounds” (Vigil 7), this is why what is put into the river flowing by may just come back in that rain drop.
As the hydrologic cycle revealed, water can build up in many places. It occurs in the ground as ground water, where it is drilled and pumped out for fresh drinking water. It builds up in lakes high up in the mountains fed by rain and ground water or low in the valleys fed by streams and rivers. It flows down mountain ranges and creates canyons or gorges as it forms the rivers like the Colorado, Mississippi or the Columbia. It is held up in plants and trees that soak this life giving liquid out of the ground for nourishment, and once it has made its way through all of this it arrives at the ocean, Earth’s hydrologic reservoir. In all of these places water gives and surrounds the life of this planet, there is not one creature on Earth that can survive without water to nourish it.
Recall the chemical makeup of a water molecule, H2O and the unique ability water has to dissolve almost anything into itself. This ability comes specifically from the unique hydrogen bonds only found in the water molecule. Because of these hydrogen bonds and water’s wide range of temperatures in which it remains liquid before turning into ice or vapor, water is the base of “those extremely complex carbon formations that constitute living organisms” (Hussein 2050). Therefore water is the base of life, but with its ability to absorb other elements water is generally in a reduced quality state because solids or chemicals are typically dissolved into the water, reducing the amount of oxygen and this makes it harder for it to used to sustain life. But when oxygen dissolves into water we find that it becomes higher in quality and more useful to living organisms. Dissolved oxygen provides many of the needed benefits of life but water can be quickly reduced in quality when additional pollutants are added to it and because of this the amount of dissolved oxygen is a good indicator of the health of a waterway (Vigil 25).
Water pollution is defined as “the presence of compounds that decrease the quality of fresh or marine water” (Lerner and Lerner 837). While there are natural pollutants, such as animal wastes and sediment, water pollution is mostly caused by human activities, such as agricultural runoffs like pesticides, urban runoffs like gasoline or oil, or household chemicals flushed down the toilet (Lerner and Lerner 837). There are two classifications of pollution sources, point and non-point. A point source is one that directly adds or would add pollutants to a local waterway, for example is municipal wastewater plants or power plants (Cooper 959). Non-point sources are less obvious, they are sources of runoff chemicals or excessive natural chemicals, for example agricultural runoffs introduce nitrogen to waterways. While this is a naturally occurring compound these runoffs can increase levels beyond what is naturally occurring and then reduces the amount of dissolved oxygen to levels that cannot support life (Cooper 955).
In the CQ Researcher article, “Water Quality” by Mary H. Cooper, EPA administrator Carol M. Browner said this about the state of America’s water ways before the 1972 Clean Water Act, “Twenty-eight years ago, the Potomac River was too dirty to swim in, Lake Erie was dying and [Ohio’s] Cuyahoga River was so polluted it burst into flames” (955). The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created in 1970 by the federal government to carry out environmental regulations and policies enacted by the government, and in 1972 they enacted the Clean Water Act that gave structure and a basis for regulating point source pollution by make it required to obtain a permit in order to discharge directly into any navigable waterway and giving regulatory control to the EPA (Summary of the Clean Water Act).
The building block of the Clean Water Act was the Federal Water Pollution Control Act. This was made into law in 1948 and was the first major piece of legislature to address water pollution. This law in conjunction with an increase in public awareness led to amendments in 1972 and 1977 that have led to substantially healthier rivers and lakes throughout the US (History of the Clean Water Act). Carol M. Browner added this about the Clean Water Act, “It stopped billions of pounds of pollution from fouling the water and doubled the number of waterways safe for fishing and swimming” (qtd. in Cooper 955). These amendments are a great step but the issue has now become much less obvious as the point sources were much easier to identify and control. There now is a much larger culprit at hand, one that is not so easily identified and much further reaching then was once thought; the non-point source pollution has become the reason that 40 percent of the United States’ waters are too polluted to drink or fish from. According to “The National Water Quality Inventory: Report to Congress for the 2004 Reporting Cycle – A Profile” less than 30 percent of all US waterways were tested, but of those tested 44 percent of the stream miles, 64 percent of the lake acres and 30 percent of the bay and estuary square miles were impaired, or requiring pollution controls.
The most recent data from the EPA’s Watershed Assessment, Tracking and Environmental Results (WATERS), “Water Quality Assessment and TMDL Information” database, the most recent reports are from 2008 and the breakdown isn’t any better. To summarize the data, less than 20 percent of all the US waters have been assessed, in that 50 percent of the streams, 68 percent of the lakes and 64 percent of the bays and estuaries were all classified impaired. While this may suggest that water pollution is becoming an increasing problem, it can interpreted as an improvement because in four years the amount of waters assessed has decreased nearly 20 percentage points and that shows that those either no longer need to be assessed or monitored or that their usage definitions have changed to where they now fall into the good classification. Unfortunately, the 2010 reports have not all been filed yet and there is not enough information to assess where the most recent data falls.
The question now becomes, can we remove these pollutants or reverse the effects of them? The answer to this weighted question is yes, Vigil shows us how a municipal waste water system works to remove much of what was put into the sewage. This process starts at the home where someone flushes the toilet and ends up at the headworks, the first step of treatment, where the sewage is run through coarse screens to remove solids like paper or plastic. Next, the remaining solids are chopped up in to smaller pieces by the comminutor and the sewage moves through the grit chamber, in which sand, gravel, cinders and other similar materials sink to the bottom of this tank. Now this grit free sewage moves to the second stage, the sedimentation tank. Here any heavier or larger solids settle to the bottom due to gravity (Vigil 71-72).
Now onto the third stage where the remaining organic materials are eliminated by biodegradation. Here the sewage is aerated so that there is plenty of oxygen for the microbes to work. Now this new mix of mostly water and microbes moves onto the second sedimentation basin where the microbes settle out of the water and are scraped back into the previous step, this keeps the microbe count up so the process can continue. The last step on this sewage to water journey is the contact chamber, where the remaining water is disinfected. Typically this is done with chlorine, with plenty of time allotted so the chlorine can have its full effect. Alternatively some systems make use of ozone or ultraviolet light to disinfect the water. After this entire process the output is labeled “effluent” and is usually piped into the nearest stream or river, sometimes it is used in an irrigation system (Vigil 72-73).
While this process or a similar one is used to remove things that are added to the water by humans before outputting it back into the environment there are similar methods in place for treating drinking water. These include sedimentation, as already discussed, but also through coagulation, flocculation and filtration. Coagulation is a process where chemicals or salts are added to neutralize suspended solids so they can group together, much like the process of blood clotting. Once this is done the water moves onto the flocculation where it is aerated so that the new, heavy coagulated particles can settle out, these new particles are referred to as “floc” particles. Now this water would move onto sedimentation and then to filtration. Finally it will be disinfected prior to being piped out to the community to be used mostly as drinking water but also for various industries (Randtke 1490).
As was just shown, the process of removing pollutants and disinfecting water is a complicated, time heavy process, one that would appear to be the lesser of two negatives as it still requires chemical pollution to “clean” the water. But this is not always the case, as William McDonough, the leading environmental design architect and designer, and Michael Braungart, a chemist, founder of the Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency (EPEA) and former director of Greenpeace’s chemistry section, suggest in their book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the way we make things. In this book they assert that our system of resources is finite, the Earth and our energy source, the Sun, don’t leave our closed loop system, continuing to create a clear illustration that if humanity does not begin to operate inside of this closed loop system, “the Earth will literally become a grave” (103).
They describe the Earth as having two independent systems consisting of biological and technical systems. They show that history reveals these systems being used both by the natural world and by humanity. Early human history shows us that tools, baskets or bags and clothing were all made out of local, natural elements that when no longer needed could easily return to the environment, and when technical materials, such as metals, came into use, they were of such high value they would be melted down and reused. McDonough and Braungart contend that humanity must return to such a system, a closed loop system imitating nature’s “cradle-to-cradle” example that makes use of waste and returns it in a new product.
Early in the book McDonough and Braungart describe when they met and the ideas exchanged. Discussing ideas like a shoe that was made of a detachable sole that was biodegradable and the remainder being polymer-based and recyclable, and of packaging designed to be actually safe to be burned in an incinerator after use. In a talk by McDonough entitled “Cradle to Cradle Design” for the TED2005 conference, he described and displayed a city concept proposed to the Chinese government that takes the existing environment and integrates with it. They “move” the existing fields and farmlands to the roof tops, take the human waste and use it as fertilizer, construct wetlands for water purification, utilize the natural gas of the wetlands for cooking fuel and is completely run from solar energy harvested from the factory roof tops. As they proposed in their book, an entirely closed loop system with biological nutrients remaining in the environment, the existing ecosystem remains and there is no need for fossil fuels.
One of the first clients of McDonough and Braungart was the Ford Motor Company, and their project was to redesign Ford’s massive Rouge River plant in Dearborn, Michigan. To do this they opened a “Rouge Room” (159) in the basement of one of the buildings there at the plant. They used this room to meet with employees and discuss ideas on how to successfully redesign the plant so that it met the goal to make it into “an icon of the next” industrial revolution (157). They brought in biologists, chemists, union representatives and more, all to discuss this massive undertaking. According to the William McDonough and Partners website, the final project was finished in 2000 and was designed as an alternative storm water management system. The final project consisted of natural meadows and wetlands, porous pavement and centered around a 10-acre green roof all designed to reduce the speed of the storm water runoff. According to the book, it will take water three days to reach the river by which time it will have been fully filtered and be cleaner than the original method of concrete pipes and storm drains. Ford also needed to clean up contamination from differing areas of the plant, but instead of digging it all up and moving it they followed McDonough and Braungart’s idea to use living plants and fungi to clean up the contamination. All of this was approximately $35 million less than what the other methods would have cost Ford.
The example set forth by the Ford Rouge River plant project has hopefully shown a new example and that different methods are both feasible, possible and profitable. This method shown through the Ford project is one that values the environment and water in a way that has not been previously thought to agree with current industries and industrial methods. McDonough and Braungart show that a high value of the environment can lead to much healthier living for humanity and everything surrounding it. As McDonough described in his 2002 piece, “Buildings Like Trees, Cities Like Forests” what if buildings were alive? What if every building built in the future “harvests the energy of the sun, sequesters carbon and makes oxygen”? This could be a world where humanity blends with nature, realizing that it is a part of the ecosystem and environment, not over it. One where the value of nature is equivalent to the value of a human life because it supports the lives of humanity.
As Carson begins her final chapter she speaks of a fork in the road, but roads that are not identical. One is said to be a “smooth superhighway” that allows for easy, rapid growth but finds its ends in disaster. The other is an unknown, it is “less traveled” and mysterious, yet in her words it “offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of our earth” (277). Now we find ourselves looking back nearly 50 years, seeing how the changes since Carson published her final book have begun to create a more livable planet, but there are always new challenges, ones that are not foreseen and are found after damage has been done. But the knowledge is there now, we know better how water works and how connected it is, how such a little change can have wide reaching and devastating effects, yet we have new examples to look to, ones like the Ford Rouge Plant that have changed a high-impact plant to one with nearly zero impact on the environment or our water. Natural technologies, pre-existing our treatment plants, have proven to be even more effective then the best concept humanity has come up with, but we can all do more to reduce our effects. We need to take action and apply these examples to our local areas and businesses. Imagine if every business in America used the Ford example and remodeled their landscape to do the same, clean and retain water just as it did before it was built on. That may just bring us to a tomorrow where we have more clean water then we thought was possible, where waterborne illnesses are a thing for the history books. It may just bring us to a time to be looking back 60 or 70 years knowing that a small book brought us to a newer and healthier view of the world around us.
Works Cited
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William McDonough & Partners. “Ford Rouge Center Landscape Master Plan.” William McDonough & Partners. William McDonough & Partners. Web. 22 Feb. 2011.
