Comparison of potential drinking water source contamination across one hundred U.S. cities

Abstract

Drinking water supplies of cities are exposed to potential contamination arising from land use and other anthropogenic activities in local and distal source watersheds. Because water quality sampling surveys are often piecemeal, regionally inconsistent, and incomplete with respect to unregulated contaminants, the United States lacks a detailed comparison of potential source water contamination across all of its large cities. Here we combine national-scale geospatial datasets with hydrologic simulations to compute two metrics representing potential contamination of water supplies from point and nonpoint sources for over a hundred U.S. cities. We reveal enormous diversity in anthropogenic activities across watersheds with corresponding disparities in the potential contamination of drinking water supplies to cities. Approximately 5% of large cities rely on water that is composed primarily of runoff from non-pristine lands (e.g., agriculture, residential, industrial), while four-fifths of all large cities that withdraw surface water are exposed to treated wastewater in their supplies.

The Relationship between Typical Environmental Endocrine Disruptors and Kidney Disease

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Enhancing urban runoff modelling using water stable isotopes and ages in complex catchments

“…With an increasing proportion of the global population living within high‐density urban environments (currently >50%, United Nations, 2018) and the projected impact of climate change on built areas (Güneralp et al, 2015; Pang et al, 2022), there is a need for continual improvement of hydrological understanding to provide an evidence base for various stakeholders to make informed decisions about urban water resources. In particular, the need to maintain the provision of ecosystem services, such as drinking water supplies or in‐stream flows, which can be dependent on urban groundwaters and surface waters (European Environment Agency, 2014; Turner et al, 2021), has increased the importance of evaluating the complex interactions between evolving urban landscapes and their sensitivity to hydrological change. While urban environments have been the focus of many hydrological modelling studies, these have traditionally focused on engineered drainage and stormwater management, with limited evaluation of ecohydrological fluxes in urban green spaces, which can comprise a significant proportion of urban landscapes (McGrane, 2016).…”

A Review on Physico-chemical Parameters of the Quality of Water

“…The contamination of water resources that can be used for residential and drinking purposes with heavy elements, metal ions, and dangerous bacteria is one of the most critical main health challenges that are currently facing the world today. The majority of the rivers that can be found in the metropolitan regions of emerging nations are the destinations of the effluents that are discharged from the factories [14,15]. Some nations in Africa and Asia are in the midst of a period of rapid industrialization; as a result, efforts to preserve their natural environments are proving challenging.…”