Chapter 3 of Protecting New Jersey’s Environment, called The Quality of Water and it talked about the different issues that are happening in the water systems in New Jersey. Right away when I began reading I was worried when I saw the Boonton Reservoir mentioned because I live right next to it. I found it slightly disturbing to read about the ball incident and the tragedy that happened with Bill Hoar. I also found it shocking to read about the dive that Tomas and Tess did where the water in the reservoir was so “chocolate brown” that they couldn’t even see each other in the water. I think that makes a big statement about how dirty our water was, even back then.
The quote that really stuck out to me though was on page 56 when it was stated “in fact, little or no toxicological information was available for many of the compounds we identified” (Belton). This quote irked me for many reasons, however the most promenade reason is because they were conducting all these tests to see what was in the water and with the results they weren’t even able to tell what it was because the chemical compounds were unknown. I find it alarming that no one was more outraged by not knowing what he or she was drinking! They even had professionals come in a look at what they found and still they could not determine the hazard to public health. This idea of not knowing is scary to me because tap water was used for everything from cooking food to being used to make infant formula- crazy to think about all the chemicals in that stuff! Then years later we learn that these exact chemicals were identified as important toxicants that are in need of regulation and reduction in the environment. Its scary to think about how people in the past and even now are consuming all of these things without even knowing.
Its also hard to be objective about how what to do about drinking water, because personally I wouldn’t want to drink the water even now. At my house my family and I only drink bottled water, or water that has been filtered beyond the filter in our sink because I don’t trust what is in it. We always get the water reports and everything is conveniently at the highest level it can be before it is considered bad. It feels wrong to be constantly using bottled water because I know how bad it is for the environment, and I try to keep my family conscious about it by being a stickler for recycling and for refilling our bottles with filtered water from the refrigerator. I have even taken the steps to refill bottles and put them back in the fridge so people will take them again. Unfortunately, reading this chapter did not give me any more confidence in the quality of water I have…