 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
Salt. It makes peanuts and popcorn taste better,
and was once considered so valuable Roman soldiers were paid with it.
But it has a darker side when it comes to water supplies, water pipes,
water heaters and even our farmlands.
Declared as the biggest contaminate affecting water supplies in Southern
California, salt was the villain, the face on the most-wanted poster,
at a recent summit held at Loyola Marymount University where a diverse
group of water-related leaders adopted an action plan to arrest the culprit.
"People forget that ancient civilizations perished because salt ruined
their land and their water,'' said Dennis Underwood, vice president of
Colorado River supplies for the Metropolitan Water District. "There
is a lot of coverage about arsenic or chromium 6, or some other chemical
that pops up here or there in a well, but salt is the bigger issue in
terms of total impact."
Whether it's a forgotten piece of history or simply lacks the sex appeal
of a modern environmental concern, salinity in water is expected to consume
millions of taxpayer dollars in source control and cleanup projects from
Southern California to upper reaches of the Colorado River in the next
several years.
"Economic damage from salinity is quickly approaching $1 billion
a year in California, Arizona, Nevada and other states that use water
from the Colorado River,'' Underwood said during the one-day "Salinity
Summit II."
The summit addressed some of the concerns about high salinity levels in
drinking water as well as how Southern California could obtain federal
funding to fight the problem. Leaders from groundwater and water reuse
associations, wastewater treatment plants and agencies that deliver local
or imported water supplies provided insight on what needs to be done to
remedy the salinity issue.
What everyone agreed upon is that salinity
is the most under-recognized water quality problem in California and the
nation. It has no champion such as Erin Brockovich—who tipped off
the state and eventually the world to chromium 6 and Hinkley, California's
tainted water supply—because it is practically invisible. The fact
is most consumers don't even recognize salinity as a problem until the
concentrations are extremely high.
But salinity affects our groundwater, and the plumbing and appliances
in our homes. It affects even the production of fruits and vegetables.
"Salinity is an insidious problem because you aren't aware it's happening,"
said Bill Mills, general manager of the Orange County Water District and
chairman of the Association of Ground Water Agencies.
The problem is compounded because salinity is not solely a people-caused
issue.
About half of the salinity in the Colorado River, one of Southern California's
major water supplies, comes from naturally occurring mineral deposits
in the lands that make up the Colorado River Basin. In one respect, it's
easy to see how the river carves its 1,400-mile journey through parts
of seven states. Draining nearly a quarter-million square miles, the Colorado
has gouged out the Grand Canyon over the course of the past 5-or-6 million
years and continues to eat away soil laden with minerals. The other, hidden
phenomenon of this massive drainage basin begins with rains. As rain soaks
into the ground, it picks up mineral deposits as it heads toward the water
with an underground rendezvous with the many streams that feed the Colorado
River - or with the Colorado itself.
These dissolved minerals—calcium, magnesium, sodium, sulfate and
chloride-create what we call salinity, which is sometimes referred to
as total dissolved solids.
