| Session 3: Pollution in Your Water How does pollution get into your tap water? Water moves across the land picking up materials in its path. If the land is polluted, the water will be polluted too. No matter where you live, water pollution can be a serious problem. Water pollution is bad for the environment and bad for your health. Nitrate, a water pollutant, is one of the fastest growing causes of pollution in this country.
 Pollution in the Land = Pollution in the Water Finding the Source Sources of Pollution Quiz Yourself
Read to Learn: When we pollute the land, we also pollute the water. As you saw in the watershed model activity (Session 2), pollution on land can enter streams, lakes, and rivers as water moves through the watershed. These streams, lakes, and rivers may be the source of your drinking water. By learning about pollution, you can make choices that help keep your drinking water clean. Do to Learn: Classroom Draw a polluted picture. Think back to your model watershed and what you learned about your own watershed. Draw a picture of your watershed, showing how the water flows from hills down into the stream, lake, or reservoir that brings water to your school. In your picture, add a few examples of things that could pollute your water. Share your drawings with the class.
Read to Learn By now you know a watershed is the land that water passes through before it gets to a stream, river, lake, or ocean. When you investigated the watershed model, you may have seen that some of the water traveled down one side of a hill, while the rest of it traveled down the other side. In the real world, the tops of hills are called ridges or divides, and they split up different watersheds. All the water flowing down one side of the hill is in one watershed, and all the water flowing down the other side of the hill is in a different watershed. Do to Learn: Computer Lab Find your very own watershed. In this activity, you will find out more about where your school’s tap water comes from. The land is divided into many different watersheds, and this is your chance to find out which watershed is yours. After you find your school’s watershed, you can investigate how clean it is. Before you begin this activity, your teacher will tell you what stream, river, lake, or reservoir your school’s water comes from. Locate your watershed at www.epa.gov/surf2/locate/map2.html.
Extension Activity: Computer Lab Learn more about watersheds at www.epa.gov/surf.
Read to Learn As you saw in The Nitrate Story, there is usually more than one cause of pollution. It is important not to point fingers and blame one person, because pollution doesn’t usually come from a single source. Many everyday activities wash pollutants into our waters. Residential Pollution Many people do not realize pollution can come from their own backyards. It is often easy to spot pollution from a factory or to see that trash dumped along a stream is causing pollution. However, the neighborhoods where people live can be serious sources of pollution. Do to Learn: Computer Lab Take a look at this visual list of things we do wrong in the environment: www.epa.gov/OWOW/NPS/kids/whatwrng.htm. Extension Activity: Classroom List the things you can do to prevent residential pollution. Here are a few examples:
Do to Learn: Classroom Draw a pollution-prevention picture. Draw a picture of the things you can do to prevent pollution from entering ground and surface waters in the first place. |
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