Sunday, November 2, 2008

H2O Project

1)How acidic is the beach water now and will the acidity increase with all the CO2 being produced in the environment?

Yes some oceans are becoming more acidic, and it is increasing with the excess CO2 in the atmosphere. It is not good that all of this CO2 is being absorbed into the ocean, and article that i read stated that,
"The ocean naturally absorbs about one-third the total amount of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere; as concentrations of the gas increase in the air, so does the amount taken up by the sea"

That is not so good one of the things that is happening is that the coral reef is dieing and it is said that it will all die by the end of this century if the water keeps absorbing the CO2. the coral reef is home to a lot of marine life if the coral reef were to die it would affect a lot of other species. This article says:
"called the rain forests of the sea, coral reefs are the ocean’s most biologically diverse ecosystems, supporting roughly 25 percent of marine life and more than 4,000 species of fish."

With all of the CO2 being absorbed by the ocean the acidity is going up in the oceans, the pH level is going down which means it is becoming more acidic, the article from PLENTY says the following about the pH level in the oceans,
"The sea’s pH has dropped by 0.1 units over the past century."
That shows us that the water is becoming more acidic over time.





2)Does it cost us money to have clean water?How much does it cost to do so?

Yes it does cost us money to keep our water clean.People have been trying to keep the water clean for the longest time and it does cost money to have clean water. in this article that I read it says that the government helped fund organizations who wanted clean water. There is this thing called the Water Clean Act and according to the article,
"...hundreds of billions of federal, state and local dollars have been invested to achieve our national clean water goals."
The cost to having clean water is high. For some time the funding for things was working and it helped clean a lot of water everywhere the article says,
"From 1974-1994 the Federal Construction Grants Program invested $96 billion in new construction and upgrades of municipal wastewater treatment plants. Local governments followed suit with an investment of $117 billion. The federal, state and local funding strategy worked, and we made remarkable environmental progress.

Over the next years the cost will go up more and it is said that it is getting harder since the government can't really help because of the economic situation we are in at the time. The price for clean water is higher, the article states,
" From this perspective, future wastewater investment costs are more than twice as high as EPA's estimate — at least $330 billion over the next 20 eyars. This $330 billion needs estimate does not include rising operation and maintenance costs, which could increase by an average of 3.8 percent per year over the next 20 years, putting more pressure on the ability of local governments."
So things are not getting any easier, they are actually getting harder which is not very good for us,because then it will be like drinking dirty water.






Sources:
PLenty: H2O + CO2

AMSA: clean water

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