Always there, clean, safe and abundant; water, the
essence of life. We need it every day, but we often forget
that safe drinking water starts way before it gets to our
tap, before the pipes that lead to our home, even before
the complicated process of treatment and disinfection
that makes raw water drinkable. It starts at the source. Our source water can come from
surface water, such as rivers, lakes and streams or groundwater; the aquifers that lie
beneath the Earth. Public water suppliers tap into these sources to provide us with our
drinking water. Drinking water whether it comes from the surface or underground is
affected by what happens on the land around it and although we don’t mean to, our
activities often end up polluting our most essential resource. Whether it is someone using
too much fertiliser on their lawn, run off manure from a farm, oil from a leaking fuel tank, or
a town allowing an industrial site on top of the water supply recharge area, we all
contribute to the contamination of our water. Contamination of our source water supplies
can cause disease and become very costly to clean. Sometimes that contaminated water
might be impossible to clean and the source must be abandoned.