TABLE OF CONTENTS Stuart A.Smith, CGWP
Consulting Hydrogeologist, Smith-Comeskey Ground Water
Science, Ada, Ohio
The topic of groundwater source quality is a complicated one, with numerous influences, both natural and human in origin. Aside from frequently being more accessible (drilling a well near a facility is often more convenient than piping in surface water from a remote location), groundwater is typically chosen because its natural level of quality requires less treatment to ensure safe, potable consumption by humans. Although many groundwaters benefit from aesthetic treatment, and sometimes from treatment to remove constituents such as metals and arsenic that pose long-term health risks, in general groundwater sources compare favorably against surface water due to the reduced treatment needed. In the dangerous modern world, groundwater sources are far less vulnerable to terrorist attack than surface water reservoirs, just as they were recognized as being less vulnerable to nuclear fallout during the political atmosphere of the 1950s and 1960s.
Arguably, surface water and groundwater form a water resource continuum in any hydrologic setting (e.g., Winter et al., 1998), and from a groundwater-biased view, surface water bodies are often simply points where the water table rises above the surface. Thus impacts on one part of this continuum can affect the other over time. However, the hydraulic connections between these two resources can be obscure (at least superficially), and surface water and groundwater management strategies in the United States (regulatory issues are discussed in Chapter 1) tend to follow...
