The report gave details about what it considered serious drinking water contamination by oil production in an area called East Poplar, Montana.

Contaminated with WHAT?

The USGS found that nearly 18 square miles of shallow aquifers in the area contained brine (also called brine water by some), a known by-product of the oil production industry. Aside from its very salty nature, brine from oil production may also contain unwanted drinking water contaminants such as hydrocarbons, metals, and radioactive material from deep in the Earth (that occurs naturally).

A few more facts about the contaminated groundwater situation in Poplar, MT:

• The City of Poplar depends exclusively on the water from the aquifers and has approximately 3,000 residents.
   
• The USGS suspects that between 15 and 37 billion gallons of awater in the aquifers may contain brine produced by the oil industry’s operations in the region.
   
• To deal w/ the contaminated groundwater problem, the city had a pipeline from the Missouri River constructed.
   
• Financially, it made more sense for Poplar to build a pipeline from an external water source than begin the arduous, extremely expensive and sometimes considered ‘impossible’ task of cleaning up its contaminated groundwater
   
• During the course of its research, the USGS uncovered documented suspicions of groundwater contamination in records dated as far back as the 1950’s
   
• USGS research efforts found trails of reported contamination incidents dating all the way up the the early 2000’s
   

Many of you probably find yourselves thinking, “That’s it! Finally some PROOF that the oil production industry WILL ruin the ground water for all of us with its drilling practices!”

Oh, that such a claim could get made and actually hold up in Court.

As with any manufacturing process, oil production has many, many steps and processes… each of which could possibly fail at some point (or slowly over time) and result in the sort of contamination seen in Poplar.

Brine may have seeped out of industrial pipelines, temporary storage pits, above ground brine storage tanks, brine disposal wells, tanker trucks loading/unloading brine at drilling sites, or the actual oil production wells themselves.

Any or ALL of the aforementioned possibilities may have occurred at various times and as years passed contamination from any or all of those sources has spread throughout the connected aquifers beneath Poplar (since groundwater stays in constant motion).

Moral of the story?

As with any industrial or commercial activity, multiple ways for potentially environmentally damaging events will always exist and only through rigorous and thorough inspection and oversight by independent third party auditors will the public learn exactly how at risk those activities put its water supply.

Without those inspections taking place and followup penalties (when applicable) getting enforced, Big Business will have all the freedom it requires to keep on practicing ‘business as usual’… quite possibly at the expense of our safety.

More: East Poplar Brine-Contaminated Groundwater Plumes Continue to Move

A glass of water containing that low an amount of sodium qualifies for the US Food & Drug Administration’s “very low sodium” category.

Why do water softeners contain salt and/or sodium?

The majority of water softeners utilize a resin bed, which you can see at their website, comprised of negatively charged plastic beads packed with positively charged sodium ions. As source water passes through the bed of beads, calcium and magnesium ions with stronger positive charges disrupt the sodium ions’ bonds with the beads and form their own bonds with the plastic beads.

Eventually after a water softener operates for a while the supply of sodium ions in the resin bed gets depleted and when that happens the resin bed must get recharged using a concentrated salt brine solution that more or less overpowers the collected calcium and magnesium and causes them to become dislodged from the plastic beads. Sodium molecules then take their place on the resin beads and the magnesium, calcium and excess sodium molecules get flushed out of the system.

After a properly completed flushing and rinsing, a water softener operating properly ought not produce water that has a salty taste since all of the actual salt (NaCl) should have gone out as waste water during back washing.

Measuring water hardness

Scientists typically measure water hardness using one of two scales: Grains per Gallon (GPG) and Parts per Million (ppm). One grain per gallon of hardness equals approximately 17.1 ppm of hardness.

You may also see ppm expressed as milligrams per liter (mg/L) in some literature.

Rating categories for water hardness

As a general rule,

• Water that contains less than 1 GPG or 17.1 ppm hardness gets labeled as ‘soft’.
   
• Water that contains between 1 and 3.5 GPG, or 17.1 to 60 ppm, hardness gets labeled as ‘slightly hard’.
   
• Water that contains between 3.5 and 7 GPG, or 60 to 120 ppm, hardness gets labeled as ‘moderately hard’.
   
• Water that contains between 7 and 10.5 GPG, or 120 to 180 ppm, hardness gets labeled as ‘hard’.
   
• Water that contains between greater than 10.5 GPG, or 180 ppm, hardness gets labeled as ‘very hard’.
   

The salt shaker on your kitchen table more than likely contains NaCl.

Other metals such as Mg (magnesium) and Ca (calcium) can also form salts in the presence of Cl (chloride), but they do not impart the same ‘saltiness’ to water and/or foods as NaCl.

Scientists have not, yet, determined the exact reason WHY different salts will taste salty, bitter or some other way, but evidence seems to point in the direction of Cl bringing saltiness to the table (pun intended) and the metals interacting with the Cl in their own unique ways causing each metal-chloride combination to have different taste characteristics.

Salty drinking water

We most often hear of this happening when one of two things has happened: 1) a water softener has developed a problem with its backwash cycle (i.e. too long a rinsing w/ salt charged water); 2) sea water (or salt water from surface runoff) has found its way into an aquifer accessed by private wells.

Regardless of how the salt got there, health experts believe that consuming too much salt, meaning NaCl, on a regular basis can have detrimental effects on a person’s health.

Testing for salt in drinking water

While simply tasting water typically serves as a surefire means of determining whether or not water contains unwanted levels of dissolves NaCl, do not drink water if you fear it has become contaminated with salt water. You will NOT like the outcome.

Use of a TDS (total dissolved solids) meter or an EC (electrical conductivity) meter will allow you to get a quick overview of your water’s potential salt concentration. While in most cases neither meter will give you a definite ‘this is salt’ verdict, water that contains elevated NaCl levels will have both a higher total dissolved solids and electrical conductivity reading than the same water sample without elevated salt levels… and even if not actually salt that either meter detects, the fact that either or both meters picked up something dissolved in the water should make you consider having a water professional test your water.

Recent drought and drought-like conditions have resulted in normal environmental sulfate levels becoming more concentrated in available water supplies due to evaporation and no replacement of the evaporates water by usual rainfalls.

Experts, who help veterinarian clinics offer telemedicine, urge ranchers to test any bodies of water that livestock drink from for sulfate levels. Such bodies include, but are not limited to, bodies of surface water, ground water, stock dam water, and well water. While the bitter taste of sulfate contaminated water may prevent animals from drinking the water under normal conditions, higher than average temperatures will make the animals a lot more likely to drink the water despite its unappealing taste.

Signs that livestock may have consumed water that contained elevated sulfate levels include reduced food intake, lethargic behavior, staring off for long periods of time for no reason, an activity called ‘head-pressing’, uneven walking patterns, falling to the ground for apparently no reason, and (of course) death.

Afflicted livestock may progress through the various stages of the illness quite rapidly if not caught in the early stages and treated with the help of a knowledgeable veterinarian.

Testing for sulfates in water

At this time we do not know of any simple dip-n-read test strips that can detect sulfate levels like the ones mentioned in the article but we DO know that sulfates typically enter the water as a salt and as such can get detected (semi-quantitatively) with the use of conductivity meters.

Devices of this nature sometimes get called ‘EC Meters’ and get used quite often in hydroponics, aquaculture and other freshwater systems to monitor amounts of dissolved nutrients, salts or impurities in the water. The more of each contaminant detected, the greater the conductivity.

So, while a conductivity meter will not tell you specifically that a body contains too many sulfates, it will give an indication that the water has a high level of dissolved items that could include unwanted levels of certain salts… like sulfates.

How about testing for sulfates in DRINKING water?

For drinking and well water testing, we carry the WaterWorks Sulfate Test Strip in our Water Test Kit Store.

Test for Chlorides
in Drinking Water

If you have clicked on this blog entry, then we would guess that you believe your drinking water has a funny taste to it — and you hoped that we had some revealing news about a potential reason for that funny taste.

Sorry to report, though, that unless you live in the Camden, Ohio area, this blog entry will not contain any information about your water supply.

It will, however, contain information about drinking water test kits and a certified drinking & well testing service that people can use to get a professional opinion regarding the quality and relative safety of their drinking water.

Remember… The first step towards making sure you have safe drinking water begins with water testing!

For right now, though, we will quote an article talking about the salty tasting drinking water in Camden, Ohio:

Many residents of Camden village in Ohio had been complaining about the taste of their drinking water, and for good reason, as testing revealed that one of the village’s three drinking water wells has high salt levels.

OEPA located several large piles of road salt believed to be the source of the village’s contaminated drinking water. The agency also believes that runoff from these piles poses a threat of contamination to surface waters in the area.( source )

Sounds pretty nasty, right? We cannot think of ANYone that would want salt water coming out of their faucet and while the salty taste in Camden’s water supply may have come from highway department salt piles, if you have a salty taste in YOUR water, where did IT come from?

Can the average person test for salt (chlorides) in their tap or well water? Yes. SenSafe manufactures a chloride test strip with a detection range of 0.05 to 80 ppm (mg/L) and a total test time under 1 minute.

Keep in mind, though, that laboratory testing of your drinking water by a certified water testing organization such as National Testing Laboratories will provide a more thorough cross-sectional view of contaminants in your water — including chlorides.

While the presence of chlorides in drinking water may not cause a terrible amount of harm in most instances, it may indicate presence of other, more harmful drinking water contaminants not easily detected by human senses — and for that reason we suggest seeking the assistance of a certified water testing lab if the taste of your drinking water ever becomes salty or otherwise begins to taste ‘funny’.

We commend the Ohio EPA for speaking up on behalf of the residents and taking action to make sure their drinking water no longer contained bad tasting chlorides.

CAMDEN, Ohio (WDTN) – Ohio EPA has issued a preliminary site approval for Camden to investigate as a possible alternate well field. The approval is the first step in the process of replacing the village’s present sodium-contaminated well field.

The village has been supplying fresh drinking water to residents who do not like the taste of Camden’s water since salt entered the drinking water system in late July. Ohio EPA officials notified village officials that Camden must find a permanent solution.

The proposed well field is north of the salt pile that is presumed to be the source of the current contamination. Indications are that the area will not be affected by the salt; however, test wells must produce adequate water quantity and be free of bacteria or other contaminants. ( source )

Can the average person test for chlorides in their own drinking water?

Of course they can! WaterWorks manufactures an easy-to-use dip and read test strip that detects chloride levels in drinking water as low as 0 ppm and as high as 500 ppm with distinct color blocks at 0, 50, 100, 250, 500 ppm (mg/L).

Most people do not have to worry about chlorides in their drinking water, but if you do, a test kit like WaterWorks Chloride Check will make testing a simple, quick task.

OK, so the the village has to find a new source of drinking water and pretty much anyone can test for chloride in their drinking water in a matter of seconds… but well water can contain quite a few other contaminants, so what about those? Can the average person test for those, as well?

WaterSafe test kits and SenSafe test kits make drinking water testing easy and affordable for everyone. Average homeowners can make excellent use of drinking water test kits such as the WaterSafe Well Water Test Kit and/or the SenSafe Water Quality Test Kit while water quality service professionals can make excellent use of drinking water test kits such as eXact Micro 7+ Water Testing Meter and/or the Well Driller Master Test Kit

Keep in mind, though, that do-it-yourself test kits for testing water quality work well as screening tools but should not get used as the ‘final ‘word’ regarding the potability of a water supply. In situations where you have reason to suspect contamination of your drinking water source, always defer to the expertise of a certified drinking water laboratory such as National Testing Labs.