You're having a good day. You have just finished washing and polishing the car, and you've even changed your own oil. Looking back down the driveway, you briefly consider cleaning up that puddle of motor oil left from the change (no, not all of it is on your shirt), but decide why bother, it'll just wash away when it rains tomorrow, and that'll be the end of it. And you know its going to rain tomorrow - because you just washed your car today.
Your day may well end here. But the oil is embarking on a journey that begins in your driveway and all too often ends in your kitchen. When you watch that excess oil wash away down your storm drain, it is not necessarily the last time you'll see it.
The spillage from this oil change is one of many examples of the greatest threat posed to the health of our waterways - nonpoint source pollution. Nonpoint source (NPS) refers to pollution resulting from the cumulative effect of contaminants released into the environment through a variety of secondary sources, such as agriculture, forestry, mining and urban runoff.
It is the primary reason why more than 40 percent of surveyed rivers, estuaries and lakes are unsuitable for even the most basic uses, such as swimming or fishing. Additionally, our households can be contributors to the NPS problem, introducing hazards into the waterways through excessive fertilization of lawns, leaking septic tanks or improper disposal of household toxins.
In addition to personal behavioral change, local government land use decisions can go a long way toward determining the amount of NPS pollution introduced into a given ecosystem.
Where and how we build our homes, whether we preserve open spaces and even where we pave our roads can greatly affect the capacity of nature to police itself. County-level land use decisions can influence the ability of natural filtering agents contained in soil to cleanse our replenishable water supply and determine how pure our swimming and drinking water will be. The rapidity of soil erosion and the health of aquatic life are also influenced by development decisions made at the local level.
To assist counties in grappling with this problem, NACo is embarking upon an effort to increase understanding and awareness of the NPS pollution issue, and equip county elected officials and planners with information about alternative land use strategies.
Funding for this project is being provided by EPA's Office of Water. Additionally, in response to growing interest in a range of land use issues among our members, NACo has formed a Growth Management Advisory Group. This group, scheduled to hold its first meeting on June 56, will help identify strategies that can lead to more effective local land-use decisions and help guide NACo's technical assistance projects in this area.
(For more information on nonpoint source pollution prevention, please contact Naomi Friedman at 202/942-4262, or David George at 202/ 942-4243.)
(County Services News was written by Martin Harris, research assistant.)