PUB00111

• Year: 1996
• Title: Layperson's Guide to Water Pollution
• CWCB Section: Interstate & Federal
• Author: California Water Education Foundation
• Description: Layperson's Guide to Water Pollution
• Publications - Doc Type: Other

operating pollution control devices. The industries
have significantly reduced the amount of metals,
other toxic pollutants and organic wastes they once
directly flushed into waterways.

Officials also have sought to reduce two sources of
occasional pollution - illegal dumping into sewers,
storm drains and directly into waterways, and
accidents often resulting from transportation acci~
dents and industrial equipment failures. To counter
these sources, water quality regulators have
employed a combination of education and enforce-
ment to prevent the pOllution from occurring, to
coordinate the cleanup of pollutants when they are
detected, and to require responsible parties to pay

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Aquifer - An underground geologic formation
that stores, transmits and yields significanf
quantities of water to wells and springs.

Best management practices - Methods,
measures or practices selected by an agency
to meet its nonpoint source control needs.
They can include structural and nonstructural
controls and operation and maintenance
procedures.

Contamination - The tainting of water so as to
cause actual public health hazards.

Ecology - The pattern of relations between
organisms and their environment.

Ecosystem - The complex of a community and
its environment functioning as an ecological
unit in nature.

Eutrophication - The process by which a body
of water progresses from its origin to its
extinction according to the levet of nutrient
and organic matter accumulation; the water
becomes richer in dissolved nutrients and
often shallower with a seasonal deficiency
in dissolved oxygen.

Groundwater - Water stored underground in
pore spaces within rocks and other alluvial
materials and in fractured hard rock occur-
ring in the saturated zone.

for the damage caused by either deliberate or
negligent actions.

While point sources typically are associated with
waste that is discharged into water, non point sources
are in large part unintentional. Nonpoint pollution
most often occurs as a result of water coming into
contact with both natural and synthetic constituents.
Countering this poliution requires identifying the
contaminants, tracing the sources and crafting
controls that can vary greatly from source to source.

Some point and nonpoint sources have pollutants in
common. Some oil refineries, for instance, discharge
selenium as does the irrigation runoff from some

Hydrofogy - The science dealing with the
properties, distribution, and circulation of
water on the surface of the land, in the soil
and underlying rocks and in the atmosphere.

fmpalred - Water bodies that cannot reason-
ably be expected to attain or maintain
applicable water quality standards, and at
least one beneficial use shows some degree
of degradation.

Nonpoint source pollution - Water pollution
caused by diffuse sources with no discern-
ible distinct point of source, often referred to
as runoff or polluted runoff from agriculture,
urban areas, mining, construction sites and
other sources.

Point source pollution - Water pollution with
a distinct, identifiable source, such as a pipe
or channel.

Pollution - Adverse and unreasonable impair-
ment of the beneficial uses of water even
though no actual heallh hazard is involved.

Watershed - A region or area bounded periph-
erally by a water parting and draining
ultimately to a particular watercourse or body
of water.

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