Ten things you may not know about water

Thirty years after passage of the Clean Water Act, an initiative called Waters of Wisconsin brought the public together with representatives from industry, agriculture, conservation, Native American tribes, government agencies, universities and other groups for a focused discussion Oct. 21-22.

They learned more about the challenges facing state waters from a diverse range of perspectives, and began to lay the groundwork for a policy on the state’s water use and management.

The forum was coordinated by the nonprofit Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. Among the UW–Madison participants were project co-chairs Steve Born, chair and professor, Department of Urban and Regional Planning; and John Magnuson, professor emeritus, Center for Limnology.

Prior to the forum, the project shared these facts about water. For information, visit http://www.wisconsinacademy.org/wow/forum.

1. The number of units of bottled “convenience water” sold in the United States has doubled since 1997, and people pay more than twice the price of gasoline per gallon for it.
3. A recent study of the health history of more than 40,000 people shows that environmental causes, rather than heredity, accounted for the overwhelming majority of cancers. Environmental causes included drinking water and many other factors.
5. Environmental releases due to the paper-manufacturing process were down 63.4 percent from 1992 to 2000 as a result of voluntary agreements.
7. Almost 50 percent of the world’s fresh water is polluted. About 25,000 people die each day from poor water quality.
9. In May 2001, Wisconsin passed the first wetland protection law in response to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that would have allowed many wetlands to be destroyed by filling.
11. The No. 1 source of oil pollution today is from people changing their car oil and disposing of it improperly — down the sink, in the storm drain or on the ground.
13. Even in water-rich Wisconsin, ground-water levels are dropping in the southeastern part of the state by an average seven feet per year. We are pumping out water faster than nature can replace it.
15. Wisconsin’s ground water, if brought above ground, could cover the entire state in a depth of 30 feet.
17. Eighty percent of breeding birds and more than 95 percent of commercially harvested fish and shellfish rely upon wetlands at some point in their life cycles. One-half of threatened and endangered species are associated with wetlands, even though wetlands comprise less than 4 percent of our landscape.
19. All water moves but not at the same rate. Some shallow ground water in the red clay areas of northern Wisconsin has been there since the time of the glaciers 10,000 years ago.