One natural resource that we as people take great advantage of is water. Water is a resource we use each and every day, and the one thing about water is that we can't create it. Sure, we can develop devices that can purify water and make it suitable for drinking but we can develop a substitute for it. Water is an ever-recycling resource, which means we have to do everything possible to keep our waters clean. We trust the quality of lake water enough to swim in it, but not enough to drink it. Along the same line, drinking water can be used for irrigation, but water used for irrigation may not meet drinking water standards. It is the quality of the water that determines its use and if we continue to pollute our waters, it may not be used at all.
There are many ways in which our water can be polluted, but it can be narrowed down to two sources: direct and indirect contaminate sources. Pollutant can also broadly classified into organic, inorganic, radioactive and acid/base. .
Direct sources are commons sourced such as sewage outfalls from factories, refineries, waste treatment plants, etc. that emit fluids of varying quality directly into our urban water supplies. The United States is one of few countries that has regulation protecting our waters but that does not necessarily mean our waters can't still be contaminated by pollutants. .
Indirect sources include contaminates that enter our water supplies may come from groundwater systems and from our atmosphere by means of rainwater. Soils and groundwater contain the remains of human agricultural practices (fertilizers, pesticides, etc.) and improper disposal of industrial wastes. Atmospheric contaminates are also resulting from human practices such as gaseous emissions from automobiles, factories, and even bakeries. .
The effects of water pollution are varied. They may and will include poisonous drinking waters, poisonous food animals (due to these organisms having bioaccumulated toxin from the environment over their life spans), unbalanced river and lake ecosystems that can no longer support full biological diversity, deforestation from acid rain, and many other effects.