Well, many of us depend on tap water to provide our water supply, and that’s a common thing. Not only for source of drinking water, tap water is also used for any other activities related to the use of water such as taking bath, washing clothes and dishes, also for sanitary use.
Focusing on the use of tap water for drinking water, we have some surprising facts you might have not known. In example, on average, Americans drink 1 liter of water directly from the tap. 95% of them never drink more than 3 liters of it in a day.
Well water, on the other hand, usually need to be processed first before consumed. However, well water is claimed to be better in many aspects compared to tap water. Isn’t it strange that the water we can drink directly is not safer than the water that needs to be processed first?
Here we will explain the conditions that make the claim is almost likely to be true.
Tap Water Dilemma
First of all, what’s the problem here? In most developed countries, such fact might be unsurprising. However, for the rest of the world, such kind of thing is nearly not doable. Not every country has drinkable tap water, and most of them require it to be processed first like by boiling or filtration.
The only similarity between every country’s tap water is availability. You will literally always have water to consume if you rely on tap water, unless your region is experiencing severe drought. The reason is because water treatment company will always have water to be processed from any sources, and then distributed.
Yes, tap water is actually processed water, whom process is done by water treatment company. They don’t just distribute water pumped from magical fountain that never runs out of clean water. In fact, water companies collect water from any sources, process it heavily, and then distribute it.
The problem here is, some to big part of collected water in this process came from wastewater. The companies are actually recycling wastewater that can contain harmful microorganism, unsafe level of chemicals, and a lot of waste.
The magic they do to make wastewater drinkable usually includes filtering with activated charcoal, the work of microorganisms, ultraviolet radiation, and heavy participation of a lot of chemicals. For our safety, the water we drink is processed with many things which are may not safe for our environment. We can see here that there is a kind of irony we cannot avoid.
Looking On Well Water
On the other side, well water is as natural as it can. It doesn’t go through heavy processes to be drinkable, it is not distributed by a single company, and it needs to be processed manually before we want to consume it.
Well water quality also heavily relies on surrounding environmental condition, which mean it can be as pure as possible that we can directly drink it, or we cannot even touch it because it is heavily contaminated with harmful contaminants.
Heavy contamination usually comes from chemicals and heavy metals produced by nearby industries. In shore areas, well water might even be salty because of sea water contamination which is natural. Another natural contaminant might come from underground water microorganism.
Since most of us don’t have the tools and technologies to clean out those pollutants manually, we need to think about whether wells in our place can be used as source of drinking water. If our environment is environmentally friendly, our well water quality must be as good as it is.
In addition to that, the fact that well water is sourced from underground water reservoir, it means it is not contaminated by contaminants from the surface. In most cases, well water only needs to be boiled or filtered to be drinkable.
Natural Maintenance For Well Water
The thing with well water is that we can change the quality of it naturally. Nature has many natural filtering materials such as sand, activated carbon, and underground microorganism. Most of the times, we don’t need to add anything to our well, but we should maintain it.
Well water maintenance can be done easily by making sure external pollutant potentials to get inside of it. Covering our well will help to prevent pollutants from surface to enter, while preventing chemicals and wastewater is enough to maintain the quality.
Basically, a properly built well can maintain water quality by itself, because of the help provided by underground natural services. Yet, introducing trees around the well will particularly improve everything about the well.
We can also improve the availability of well water simply by planting trees. Trees are natural absorber of groundwater, and well water is actually dug up groundwater from its reservoir. That’s why, most wells that have abundant water are placed near big trees.
In addition to that, trees will introduce various underground organisms to well’s surrounding, which mean an improvement to its filtering ability. There are many other benefits from introducing trees around your well, but make sure the leaves are not littering your well water.
Environmentally Friendly
Well water is one of the earliest and most natural sources of fresh water in human civilization. In that case, we need to make sure that our well water is both consumable and environmentally friendly. To do it, we don’t need great efforts. We can do these simple steps instead.
As mentioned above, make sure to introduce some greenery around. Trees and other plants will help us to maintain the quality and quantity of well water greatly. Second, is to avoid using chemicals around the well, because it is highly possible the chemicals will sip down into the ground and contaminate well water.
Having a well itself is environmentally friendly. Firstly, because it stops us from buying bottled water. Secondly, it will support the growth of both micro and macro floral organisms in surrounding environment. Thirdly, it is not touched by any harmful chemicals which mean we can safely use it to water plants.
In short, building a well is like building a mini ecosystem. All we need to maintain it is natural, and everything we can get from it is also natural.
Sources:
Leave a Reply