Increased precipitation from climate change will mean increased surface runoff, so non-source pollutants will contaminate drinking water sources at higher rates, meaning more money and time must be spent on water treatment and lower quality aquatic ecosystems.
But this is only the second largest contributor of rising source water contamination.
The single largest cause is development patterns and sprawl, such as in Atlanta. Bad land use policy (i.e. paving everything and growing lots of lawns) leads to really bad stormwater effects - worse source water, higher probability of flooding, more expensive water treatment, etc. This is in addition to the fact that said sprawl significantly increases the levels of non-source pollutants because of, for example, higher vehicle dependency; or that said sprawl tends to mean less tree cover and therefore higher temperatures, which in turn increase the severity of precipitation events. Too bad it's like, impossible to fix.
Do you really think they are gonna pay money to improve water treatment instead of just telling everyone to buy bottled water? Full Country Flint Michigan speedrun incoming.
I think they'll improve water quality treatment up to a point - lots of places are using more activated carbon treatments as source water is degrading, for example - but after a certain point places will just import water like in parts of Mexico City. A lot of people observed the downsides of sprawl as it relates to transit, which is fair, so thought I'd add that it's also really bad for urban water systems.
Increased precipitation from climate change will mean increased surface runoff, so non-source pollutants will contaminate drinking water sources at higher rates, meaning more money and time must be spent on water treatment and lower quality aquatic ecosystems.
But this is only the second largest contributor of rising source water contamination.
The single largest cause is development patterns and sprawl, such as in Atlanta. Bad land use policy (i.e. paving everything and growing lots of lawns) leads to really bad stormwater effects - worse source water, higher probability of flooding, more expensive water treatment, etc. This is in addition to the fact that said sprawl significantly increases the levels of non-source pollutants because of, for example, higher vehicle dependency; or that said sprawl tends to mean less tree cover and therefore higher temperatures, which in turn increase the severity of precipitation events. Too bad it's like, impossible to fix.
Do you really think they are gonna pay money to improve water treatment instead of just telling everyone to buy bottled water? Full Country Flint Michigan speedrun incoming.
I think they'll improve water quality treatment up to a point - lots of places are using more activated carbon treatments as source water is degrading, for example - but after a certain point places will just import water like in parts of Mexico City. A lot of people observed the downsides of sprawl as it relates to transit, which is fair, so thought I'd add that it's also really bad for urban water systems.