September 1961 — Vol. 42, No. 7 —
Pollution of
Water
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Because water is such an intimate part of our daily lives,
most of us give little thought to it. But few if any problems
are more closely woven into the fabric of our modern society
than the control of water pollution.
Clean water is essential to life. Moreover, it is necessary
to industry, to agriculture, and to the conservation and use
of the many natural resources upon which our richer life depends.
Here is a paradox: amid our seemingly increasing ease and
safety, amid the proliferation of comforts and gadgets to
make physical life happier, the danger to life itself is increasing
day by day as the result of pollution of our water supplies.
There is world—wide concern with the menace to human
life arising from scarcity of water in places where it is
needed and the pollution of water used by people and by the
creatures we use as food. Two hundred scientists from thirty—three
countries met in Paris last year to discuss the problem. As
to scarcity of water, they found that in some places water
is being taken from the ground about a thousand times faster
than it is being replenished by rainfall. As a result, water
must be used over and over again.
The water passing down the St. Lawrence, drawn into domestic
water systems and industrial plants, has been used and discarded
by hundreds of cities. Distances between waste outfalls and
water intakes are being wedged closer and closer together
by expanding population and the growth of new industrial and
residential centres.
There is nothing criminal or morally wrong in this development
of industries and cities. It is the product of man's constant
effort to adapt his physical environment to his changing economic
and social needs. What would be wrong would be to continue
taking water for granted without doing anything effective
to repair the damage caused to it by our own acts. We have
to learn to come to terms with the poisons we make. Up to
now we seem to have bypassed the question: "How much poison
can I stand and still live?" and we have contented ourselves
with calling upon science to give us some corrective and preventive
prescriptions.
Causes of pollution
Pollution comes chiefly from two sources: human sewage and
industrial waste. It endangers health, it steals from us our
sports fishing and our bathing, it robs us of our shellfish
foods and commercial fish supplies, it reduces property values
by impairing the appearance and the usefulness of our land,
it makes our drinking water nauseating and raises offensive
odors. It damages our bridges, docks, boat hulls and buildings.
It is a shocking thought that few people in industrialized
areas have ever seen streams of any size that were completely
free of man—made pollution.
We have, in the past, relied trustingly upon nature to protect
us, but to burden a stream or other body of water with gross
polluting material and expect safe and attractive water to
be immediately returned is demanding of nature that it do
more than its share.
Before our population—industrial surge pollution was
not a serious problem, because the wastes from every city
were diluted by the flowing water, oxidized by the bacteria,
used as fertilizer by the water plants, and filtered through
the river sands and gravel, so as to reach the next user in
fairly clean condition.
Multiplication of cities and their discharges has loaded
the water with an insupportable amount of poisons from the
factories, offal from the slaughterhouses, raw sewage from
the homes. These kill the cleansing plants, use up the purifying
oxygen in the water, and clog the filtering gravels with filth.
We have been accepting all that supinely, and expecting
our municipal filtration plants to transform the dark coloured
fluid, sometimes half sewage, into water for drinking. It
is a grievous reflection on the intelligence of those who
permit the condition to endure.
What is pollution?
It should be made clear that we ourselves are responsible
for pollution of our water supplies. Pollution is the discharge
of material that unreasonably impairs the quality of water
for maximum beneficial use in the overall public interest.
Of what does this material consist? It is made up of body
wastes, used bath and dish water, washings from restaurants
and laundries, refuse from hotels and hospitals, and wastes
from other establishments serving our needs. That is our personal
contribution. In addition, there are industrial wastes, like
acids, chemicals, greases, oils, animal and vegetable matter.
For centuries, if water did not offend the senses it was
considered usable for any purpose. People avoided bitter or
smelly or coloured water. Today, we know from the discoveries
of Leeuwenhoek, Pasteur, Koch and Lister the dangers that
may lurk in clear, odorless water. The bacterial yardstick
as a measure of pollution has been expanded to include the
viruses. Now we need a formula to measure the harmful effects
of numerous chemical substances which may resist treatment
by conventional or known methods. Any evaluation of present
day chemical pollution must take account of wastes from new
organic chemicals such as detergents, insecticides and weed
killers, as well as of radioactivity.
Industrial waste
Today's progressive factory owner has just about as much
at stake in the matter of clean water as has any tap—water
user. Many a community has lost industrial opportunities because
the water available was not suited to factory needs. Too many
communities insist upon industry achieving low levels of contaminants
in used water, while the municipalities themselves pollute
the streams with untreated or inadequately treated municipal
sewage.
In the past twenty—five years industry has for the
most part assumed its responsibility in the conservation of
water faster than have municipalities. It spends many millions
of dollars on waste disposal and in research to improve its
methods.
More and more, the cost of waste control facilities automatically
becomes a part of plant installation cost and the operation
is an integral part of the operating costs of the plant. The
chemical business in the United States is spending forty million
dollars a year to control its wastes; pulp and paper manufacturers
have invested nearly a hundred million dollars in treatment
systems in the past decade, cutting their pollution per ton
of paper to half of what it was. At a Quebec plant there has
been installed a bark burning machine, destroying 150,000
pounds of a pollutant which would otherwise have floated down
the river in a day.
Research people are at work constantly in the search for
improvements. New control methods must be developed progressively
if they are to keep pace with our changing economy.
Pesticides
Insects are man's greatest competitor for the food he eats.
Our survival demands that we control them effectively.
However, this does not demand that we spray—kill everything
that crawls, flies, bites or bores. In too many cases we have
also killed birds, animals, fish and bees, and we have poisoned
the streams from which we drink, and the fruit and vegetables
we eat.
Pesticides, wisely applied, have done much to improve agriculture
and give us better health, but their use involves a calculated
risk and demands widespread education. Farmers have a definite
responsibility for safe use of chemicals, and those who instruct
them in the use of chemicals have even greater responsibility.
Unknown ten years ago, there are now on the market well
over 12,500 brand name products and more than two hundred
basic control compounds. These, while fulfilling their function
on land, may enter our water supply by direct application
to the water surface, by drifting on to the water surface
from treated fields, or by seepage from the watershed. This
offers death to fish, to birds, to aquatic animals, and, it
may be, danger to man. As a speaker said at the National Conference
on Water Pollution in Washington in December 1960: "We are
running an unnecessary risk when we just blithely go ahead
and use these things because we have not died yet." The report
of this conference is available from the Superintendent of
Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.,
for $2.25.
We need pest control, but it is imperative that it be guided
by responsible and objective leadership and that other interests
be appropriately co—ordinated with the objectives of
control.
As a start, public education and education on the county
agricultural representative level should demonstrate to users
of sprays and insecticides of all sorts that the material
is extremely toxic to fish life and must be excluded from
our waters. A strong declaration on the national level and
by provincial governments would have a beneficial effect in
the public interest.
There is proof aplenty of the need. Several years ago severe
mortality occurred among coho fry, trout and steelhead yearlings
when a western province forest was sprayed to control the
blackheaded budworm. Ninety—one per cent of young salmon
were killed in an eastern province when a forest was sprayed
against spruce budworm, and aquatic insects wiped out at that
time had not re—established themselves even sixteen months
later.
Coming closer to everyday life, we find that synthetic chemical
contaminants, impossible at this time to remove by sewage
treatment or by normal water purification practices, are taking
their toll of aquatic life. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology
professor told a pollution conference that the chemical industry
should be asked to create household detergents that can be
destroyed in city waste treatment plants. As it is, some new
chemicals have been traced downstream as far as 1,000 miles.
Research on detergents, using rats as subjects, has shown
that these creatures do not suffer any health hazard from
detergent residues. However, scientists add: "... we do not
know the long—range effects of these contaminants. We
may not know some of these effects for generations."
Disease—carrying water
Dr. Gustave Prévost, head of the biological bureau
of the Quebec Fish and Game Department, said in February:
"People have become so used to living with polluted water
that they have become indifferent to the problem and accept
it as a necessary evil."
Everybody relies upon the undoubted fact that science has
conquered the great water—borne diseases, but the reality
remains that the source of the diseases -pollution - has not
been stopped.
The protective wall built by science keeps epidemics from
ravaging our cities, but in small ways pollution is slipping
through the wall. Vague intestinal symptoms put us to bed
for a few days, and we learn on getting back to the office
or factory that others, too, have been laid up.
It is no wonder such things happen. How can the grey and
greasy and scummy water we see along the shore, or the filthy
conglomerate we find on the bottom of the stream, be turned
without fail into sparkling and pure tap water to fill our
drinking glass?
It is time we started to take stern preventive measures.
Consider the fact that it was sixty years after scientists
had discovered the link between cholera and sewage—polluted
drinking water before methods for the purification of water
began to bring typhoid, endemic diarrhea, and dysentry under
control. It will take us a long time to restore our streams
by cleaning the water we return to them.
Wildlife and recreation
Turning to non—human sufferers, we find that pollution
vitally affects birds and fish and other wildlife. It threatens
the existence of aquatic vegetation, the small aquatic insects,
the mollusks and the crustaceans on which our waterfowl, game
fish and water—loving mammals depend.
There have been heavy losses of waterfowl to pollution on
the Great Lakes and in their connecting waters. On one occasion
some ten thousand ducks, mostly the scarce canvasbacks and
redheads, were destroyed on the Detroit River by the release
of untreated sewage.
In the United States, the area of fish and wildlife habitat
rendered unproductive every year by pollution is greater than
that created by all public agencies conducting fish and wildlife
restoration programmes.
Interest in the relationship of fish population to water
pollution is not by any means restricted to academic research.
The supreme interest in the subject is expressed by the angler
who discovers a stream full of dead fish, and by the commercial
fisherman who finds his fishing area barren.
These people - those who respect and value fish and fishing
for food or recreation - are increasingly demanding that authorities
give effect to at least the minimum guarantees. All the replenishment
of fishing grounds by hatchery stock will be futile if the
environment of the fish is not right.
There are three types of waste affecting fish: organic wastes
causing oxygen depletion; wastes that are directly toxic;
and non—organic wastes which cause some mechanical change
either to the fish directly or to their habitat. For example,
sawdust has all three types: it demands much oxygen, it exudes
toxic substances, and it can directly injure gill filaments
through mechanical abrasion. In addition, sawdust settles
to the bottom of the stream and is capable of burying spawning
gravels and bottom organisms. Soil erosion also contributes
to sediment pollution, damaging the stream habitat for all
the more desirable fish. Thousands of miles of otherwise fine
fishing waters have been taken out of production because of
the acid damage from coal mines or the poisonous effluent
from industrial plants.
Oil pollution has its place in the roster of practices damaging
fish. Sooner or later ships, particularly those using our
inland waterways, must be so designed that the wastes can
be pumped ashore for treatment or treated on board.
Sewage disposal
The state of affairs involving pollution of our rivers by
sewage got out of control before the magnitude of the problem
was realized, and we have not been aggressive enough with
our treatment programmes to catch up, let alone get ahead
of the grim condition.
The methods of sewage treatment have now been developed
to a high degree of efficiency. Primary treatment removes
some thirty—five per cent of the pollutants by screening
and sedimentation. Secondary treatment removes, by such means
as trickling filters or the activated sludge process, the
wastes that are in solution or in colloidal suspension. As
a result of primary and secondary treatments, around ninety
per cent of the organic matter originally present can be removed
before the effluent is discharged.
Why is this treatment not universal in Canada? It is safe
to say that there are two reasons: the need has not been appreciated,
and the cost is not relished. The first excuse can be eliminated
by education: the second is not so serious when the facts
are obtained. The cost, spread out over thirty to fifty years,
said Dr. Prévost, would be less than a cent a day per
person. There are, he said, 350 such plants in Ontario. While
there were about forty sewage treatment plants in Quebec,
only about three or four of them treated sewage completely
before flushing it into rivers and streams.
Whatever the cost, authorities across Canada are showing
signs of shrugging off the inertia that has held back action.
The Prime Minister declared in November 1960 that pollution
of Canada's rivers and streams is "one of the most potentially
dangerous threats to our whole economy." In March it was announced
that the federal government has voted $100 million to help,
and is prepared to lend up to 66 per cent of the construction
costs and to make a gift of 25 per cent of this amount to
any municipality that finishes its work before March 31, 1963.
A 16—man national committee of prominent engineers
and scientists is at work studying the use, conservation and
pollution control of Canada's water resources, with a final
report due at the end of this year. This committee was set
up by the Engineering Institute of Canada and the Canadian
Institute on Sewage and Sanitation.
Ontario is putting its shoulder to the job of eliminating
pollution of its streams at a cost the Premier says will be
six times that of the St. Lawrence Seaway.
In Quebec, briefs were presented to the government in March
telling the seriousness of the situation in this province
and emphasizing the urgency of remedying it. In May, the government
decided on appointment of a permanent water purification board
having extensive investigating and regulatory power, and offered
financial aid to municipalities in the form of a one—sixth
subsidy. In June, Dr. Gustave Prévost was appointed
chairman.
Responsibility
Where does the responsibility ultimately lie? The answer
is plain and simple: every city and town, every industry,
is responsible for cleaning up the pollution it creates. Stream
sanitation is a co—operative responsibility, involving
everyone along the banks.
Cities and towns and industries need to call upon the professional
and technical people who have knowledge of these matters.
In turn, the people who plan the remedy must take into consideration
all the users of water.
Pure tap water and clean water for industrial processes
are essential: so is the wildlife of our streams and lakes.
Society suffers if one segment of our resource base is managed
alone without consideration of all others.
After competent engineers collect the data and make recommendations,
then the force of public opinion enters. The lag between the
decision to do something effective and the start of work on
the projects must not be long.
The anti—pollution movement offers an outstanding opportunity
for country—wide co—ordination, dynamic leadership
and effective action.
Pollution control fits into the purposes of nearly all civic
organizations, business, conservation, service and industrial.
They can all assist, and not only by passing resolutions.
They can use their own interest, whether boating or swimming,
hunting or fishing, irrigating or draining, or just enjoying
nature, to press for action.
Positive pollution control
Pollution control in the past has been mostly corrective;
in the future it must be preventive. Gross pollution is an
offence to human decency, and it can be corrected only by
positive methods and controls.
Science and technology have provided the tools, and are
capable of providing better tools as we need them. All we
have to do is get at the job in dead earnest.
We should do so in a spirit of maturity of judgment, and
not in panic actions which will provide half—measure
solutions.
Then, within our lifetime, we may see our ruined streams
so rehabilitated that they no longer offend the nose and eye;
we may enjoy our beaches; we may see birds and fish and small
creatures return for our enjoyment - all this, if we sincerely
desire to meet water quality demands.
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
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