Really stupid question about water

[Zenbirder]

I know we are all being encouraged to conserve water and I understand the whole planet concept of water conservation. But, locally we are above normal water and have been for some time.

And we have a well/septic system. Our well goes into an underground stream with a huge flow. This is per the well people and the people who tested our water.

If I am using water and draining through the septic, as long as I keep out anything toxic and keep my septic system healthy, am I returning it or do I need to really conserve??

I really don't mean to sound ignorant or stupid I get why we should conserve, but aren't we returning most of the water to the same place it came from??

Here are a couple of things just for you to think about **for your particular situation** since you asked for the mental exercise:

How much filtration does your return water through the septic system get before it rejoins the underground stream? In other words, how deep is the stream below the surface and is there soil matter with lots of natural bacteria and fungi; or is it filtering through cracks in rocks and getting very little microbial action?

Why would this matter? Because you can not necessary keep all the toxic chemicals out of your septic system. Some of the problem chemicals you might not have thought of are excreted in our urine like hormones and prescription drugs. If for example, if you are in a limestone - karst area, your downstream well neighbors could be drinking these chemicals from you in minute amounts, as can you be from your upstream neighbors. There is debate as to how much of a problem this is, and I think in most cases it is really serious only where municipal water systems are taken from rivers, dumped back in and taken again downstream etc. Unless: the house just upstream from you has someone taking chemotherapy.... (But that is not really about water conservation, sorry)

How much water as a percent are you actually returning? Do you use any of the water for irrigation of lawn or garden?

Bottom line with the limited facts you have given, I think you probably are not doing a lot of environmental damage by not conserving. I put the stuff in about the chemicals only as a mental exercise, if there is a good underground river flowing any chemicals would be so diluted you wouldn't have to worry one bit.

 

[Beekissed]

Springs that used to be crystal clear around here are now contaminated with carcinogens~whole towns in the next county over have found that they have been drinking this for a long time,as the town water supply was from springs. That is normal around here, for town water to be spring supplied.

I agree, that some streams and rivers have been "cleaned up" in appearances since the 70s but they support less aquatic life than ever, are decreasing in size and harbor bacteria that kill the fish and plants due to an abnormal pH. We are fighting this right now in our area, with vast studies done as to why our fish are dying, why whole communities who share a water system are exhibiting various forms~or the same forms~ of cancer.

The water may look cleaner but the chemicals from all those years past are still leaching from the soil, rocks and roots of the river banks and will continue to do so for many years. When my dad was young, a train wreck dumped oil and coal into one of the streams that ran by our house. You couldn't eat any of the fish, even 50-70 years later and can still lift the rocks and find oil standing on the water~to this day!

 

[me&thegals]

Such excellent, intelligent responses! Now I have some better ammunition when people around me comment on the dumbness of trying to conserve water when we have such abundant watersheds in WI.

I find it very frustrating that someone trying to be SS needs to be cautious about eating fish out of nearly every single lake or stream in America. We have lots of places to fish around here, but I have to weigh the benefits of free, delicious, healthy (in some ways) fish versus mercury and other toxins.

 

[sylvie]

I think conserving in general is a good habit to get into. You are already adjusted and comfortable when a shortage does hit.

We have 5 springs, a small stream that has never dried up in the summer, put in a pond, a 1500 gal buried cistern for rainwater, a well, a 1200 gal cistern. There are times that we have had to have water delivered. You'd think with all this we'd be sitting pretty, but a drought year can be devastating to a source. I think some of the housing developments have altered the structure.

A neighbor had a well put in that drew 50 gallons per minute!!
She decided to have her electric line to her house buried as is popular. Guess what! The well dried up instantly and she needed to have a new well drilled which provides only 1 gal per minute. She trucks in water monthly. We have more of an impact on water than one would realize.

We have landscape nurseries south of Lake Erie that have sunk in more well points than the hardware stores can keep in stock. The aquifer is compromised and residents can no longer count on the wells they once had.

When they put in Interstate 90 all the wells just north of it dried up, including Artesian wells.

 

[Beekissed]

Sylvie, this happened to us! When my folks moved to an old farm to homestead, we used from a spring for awhile and didn't really access the old hand-dug well on the place because we didn't know if we could count on it for a plentiful supply. We eventually started using it, but Dad wanted to have a deep well drilled. We saved and saved and eventually had the deep well drilled....before we could even run pipe down it and put up a hand pump, an oil well was fracked a mile away~we had a fresh oil/gas supply mixed in with our new deeper well!

We ended up using the much more shallow, hand-dug well for the following 9 years and never had a problem with the oil/gas content or with it ever drying up in drought seasons.

 

[sylvie]

Sylvie, this happened to us! When my folks moved to an old farm to homestead, we used from a spring for awhile and didn't really access the old hand-dug well on the place because we didn't know if we could count on it for a plentiful supply. We eventually started using it, but Dad wanted to have a deep well drilled. We saved and saved and eventually had the deep well drilled....before we could even run pipe down it and put up a hand pump, an oil well was fracked a mile away~we had a fresh oil/gas supply mixed in with our new deeper well!

We ended up using the much more shallow, hand-dug well for the following 9 years and never had a problem with the oil/gas content or with it ever drying up in drought seasons.

How devastated your father must have felt! I wish there was a way to hold these projects accountable. Your family should have been compensated.
A lot of companies that produce toxic by-products use deep injection wells to dispose of the waste. How do they know for certain if the waste isn't backing up a thousand feet into the aquifer?
There is a community nearby with an aquifer contaminated with e coli. They still allow new wells, old and new wells still test bad 100% of the time.

We need to monitor our own water supply as best we can.

 

[enjoy the ride]

I've heard of springs disappearing when the ground somewhere else was disturbed- they really need to be treated with respect.
Where I live in the mountains drilling a well is a real gamble. With the water table being about 1500 feet down, what you are really doing is looking for that crack in the rock where water flows through. And since you can't see what is going on, you can't really tell where to look.