Hey, is that water clean?

There are three questions I get asked on a regular basis when I tell people I am an Aquatic Scientist.

What’s this plant, bug, or thing.
How clean is this water? (points to nearby pond)
Have you ever thought about doing anything else besides teaching.

I love answering all questions related to nature and the environment and I have a really good time hearing about peoples interests. However, the third question lets me know a lot of implicit bias people have towards teachers and how few people think of teaching as a real career. That could be a whole post on its own, but we are here to talk about clean water.

This post is specifically about your local lake, neighborhood stream, or backyard pond. Public utilities are, for the most part, a regulated entity that have standards of quality that must be met. What happens when they don’t meet these standards is another thing entirely. However, I am interested in how clean the water is in your neighborhood. Both because it has an affect on your well being, and the animals and plants around you.

What does it mean for water to be clean. We have been told by advertisements and tv shows that clean water should be clear. It shouldn’t taste weird or funky. It should come from a clean place like a mountain spring or a deep underground aquifer. Clean water is cold and icy, water straight from the sky or melted snow. Clean water is untouched by any animal or biological hands. Does that mean that a lake full of life, plants, fish, ducks and turtles is not clean? Does that mean if you cant see the bottom of your neighborhood pond that its, dirty?

Many of the things that we don’t want in our drinking water, or things that make water taste bad we cant actually see. If I asked you where the dirtiest water on earth is, you might think of water that’s brown or covered with a rainbow sheen from oil. But the nutritious life giving force of Mississippi river, which supplies food and oxygen to gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, is brown. The nickname muddy Mississippi comes from the light brown silt layering the depths of the Mississippi river basin. This silt darkens the river water and paints the beaches in the gulf of Mexico west of Louisiana something in between Sherwin Williams Bacalite gold and Sears khaki. Many people think this brown water comes from nearby industry, but they would be surprised to find out that this elixir of life is driving the whole ecosystem.

So if we cant rely on our eyes, can we rely on our nose? Water in nature has a funk, there is no way around it. Spring water bubbling from the ground, as it passes layers of rock older than humans, picks up chemicals that give it a “flavor.” In Texas this flavor is calcium and can make your tongue feel a little chalky. What about lake water, brimming with algae and bacteria? It can smell a little like moldy salad greens, and taste about the same. Is this also dirty? When you jump off the nearest rock wall and get a nose full, it might stick with you for a few days.

The truth is that the things we really should be worrying about are difficult to smell or taste. These things are the icky ones, the ones that make us sick or could hurt us long term. Bacteria that give us diarrhea, parasites that eat our insides, or chemicals dumped by the nearest republican funding corporation- I mean totally legit business enterprise that sometimes makes mistakes.

A moth stopping for a drink at McKinney falls state park. 2021

With the recent events in Palestine Ohio and the immense cover up and government inaction it really makes you question how much people really value water in the environment. The idea that “its already dirty” or “this wont affect me” really goes out the window when everything gets so much worse. Ohio was the site of one of the first major water based disasters on the Cuyahoga river in 1952. An event that led indirectly to the forming of the EPA and clean water act. I wonder if this event will have the same impact in 2023, or if we are doomed to repeat history.

To read more about the Cuyahoga river checkout this article from the history channel here