Water PollutionUnfortunately, pollutants enter the Earth’s systems of rivers, lakes, and oceans every day. Sometimes this is due to careless acts by people, accidents, or broken equipment. More often it is considered a “normal” part of doing business.

However it happens, the result is the same: pollutants that enter the Earth’s water system affect not only plants and animals that live in the water, but the surrounding environments as well.

This oil well off the coast of Ciudad del Carmen, Mexico blew up on June 3, 1979. By the time the well was brought under control over seven months later, an estimated 140 million gallons of oil had spilled into the bay. This was one of the largest oil spills ever.

140 million gallons! Just how much oil is that anyway? Can you figure out a way to help somebody understand just how much 140 million gallons really is?

Oil Spills

140 million gallons. That’s something like…

• Filling the average-sized bathtub up around 2 million times. To do this, you would have to fill up your bathtub 10 times a day, every day for about 550 yearsyears in a row! Don’t skip a day, now!

• Or, filling up your classroom about 5,500 times! That’s something like once a day, every day, for 15 years!

Many people say that Alaska’s Prince William Sound is one of the most beautiful places in America.

It is also the site of one of our worst environmental disasters.

On March 24, 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez crashed into a reef in Prince William Sound. The tanker was carrying about 53 million gallons of oil from Alaska to the West Coast. Within a few days, it spilled almost 11 million gallons of the oil into the Sound. These pictures show heavy

sheens of oil floating on the surface of the water. A sheen is a thin film.

Millions of dollars were spent trying to contain the contamination, but even so, many plants

and animals were killed.

Oil booms protecting a salmon fish hatchery.

Three days after the Exxon Valdez crashed, a storm pushed large quantities of oil onto the rocky shores of many of the islands nearby. Oil spills can be very harmful to fish, marine birds and mammals. Oil prevents some animals from keeping themselves warm (it ruins their fur and feathers), and other animals may swallow oil as they try to clean themselves, which can poison them.

Other sources of water pollution

Chemicals Septic back-up

PaintChlorine

Snohomish County Surface Water Management

Credits

All other photos courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration