How 'bout some Cherry 7UP!

Nationwide we purchased 11.286 billion gallons of soft drinks in 1987 at a cost of about $32.6 billion. If all this soda pop were poured into one aluminum can of standard diameter, the can would be 9.26 million miles tall — one-third of the way to Venus. A straw for this can would wrap around the earth 372 times.
Source for gallons "Beverage Market Index for 1988," Beverage World, May 1988.

Privatization of drinking water?

The growth star of the beverage universe is bottled (noncarbonated) water. National consumption increased an amazing 12 percent in 1987 — to 1.18 billion gallons worth $1.8 billion in retail sales. Bottled water booms occurred in the Middle Atlantic, New England and West South Central regions, though the Pacific states still lead in per capita consumption — 61.9 gallons per year.
Source: Same as above.

H₂O to go

Illinoisans' consumption of 59.4 million gallons of bottled water in 1987 was fifth in the nation — and way up from 51.2 million gallons in 1986 and 37.5 million in 1985.
Source: The Beverage Marketing Corporation, New York.

Surface water supply

Even with normal rainfall, most areas of the state will still be at least eight inches short of average rainfall by April 1989. That's because the state's dry soils will be soaking up about two-thirds of the rain. Rivers will continue to be low, and reservoirs that looked good during the summer drought will be low by spring.
Source: The State Journal-Register, September 7, 1988.

Groundwater supply

The state's shallow sand and gravel aquifers and its deeper bedrock aquifers yield an estimated 7 billion gallons of water per day — far more than we need.

But a big increase in irrigation is causing conflicts in some areas among townspeople and farmers. And we're taking more out of the deep sandstone aquifers in northeastern Illinois than is coming in.
Source: Jim Krohe, "Groundwater: The Invisible Resource," The Nature of Illinois, Spring/Summer 1988 (Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys, Springfield.)

Groundwater pollution

The state's groundwater monitoring network has sampled 1,089 community wells (out of a total to be sampled of 3,000) and found 8 percent of the wells to have quantifiable levels of toxic synthetic organic chemicals.

Of 400 community wells monitored for pesticides, three were found to have detectable levels of pesticides.
Source: Illinois Water Quality Report, 1986-87, Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.

Groundwater protection

There is no statewide crisis in groundwater quality. Most recorded sources of contamination are very near the wells themselves. The 1987 Illinois Groundwater Protection Act requires setback zones to protect wellheads and mandates more monitoring and research of little-understood groundwater problems.
Source: Krohe.

Cherish your aquifers

Groundwater is at risk in areas where shallow sand and water or bedrock aquifers are heavily pumped and where there is a long record of industrial and commercial activity.

That includes the metropolitan counties of northeastern Illinois: Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kankakee, Kendall, Lake, McHenry and Will. And the metropolitan counties in the state's major river valleys: Winnebago, Boone; Peoria, Tazewell, Woodford; Adams, Madison and St. Clair.
Source: John A. Helfrich, An Assessment of Regional Ground-Water Contamination in Illinois, 1988 (Hazardous Waste Research and Information Center, Savoy).

Use explosives, large weights and electrical currents

That's what state geologists are doing to find buried valleys which may contain new sand and gravel aquifers. Water from two such aquifers in Kane County will be blended with water from overused deep sandstone aquifers. The deep-well water is briny and contains more (naturally occurring) barium and radium than allowed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA).
Source: Water Survey Currents. January/February 1988 (Illinois State Water Survey, Urbana).

Take a six-foot propeller and mount it on a platform five feet below the surface of a lake

Power the propeller with a 1.5 to 3.0 horsepower electric motor, using a waterproof electrical cord laid along the bottom of the lake. Add some design refinements, and you have a mechanical lake destratifier.

Manufactured by E.C. Baker and Son Inc. in Sigel, these destratifiers are restoring 11 lakes in Illinois. They do this by maintaining adequate oxygen levels and preventing thermal stratification — the separation of lake water during the summer and winter months into layers with distinct temperature differences.
Source: Baker and Son Inc.

Add alkalines

To limit lead leaching into water from lead pipes, which now accounts for an estimated 20 percent of the typical U.S. resident's lead exposure, the U.S. EPA has proposed new rules. The rules would require public water suppliers to use alkaline additives when average lead levels at their consumers' taps are greater than 10 parts per billion or if the water has a pH of less than eight. The regulations would also lower allowable levels of lead in drinking water to 5 parts per billion. The current level is 50 parts per billion. Water suppliers get three years before they have to implement the rule.
Source: Science News, August 20, 1988.

General funds

The general funds balance at the end of August was $61,747 million. The average daily available balance was $244,694 million.
Source: Office of the Comptroller.

Jobless rates up

The nation's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose in August to 5.6 percent, and Illinois' moved up to 7.0 percent.

There were a recordbreaking 5.887 million people in the state's labor force in August; 415,000 people were unemployed — up by 49,000; 5.472 million workers had jobs.

Final unemployment rates for the state's metro areas in June were:

Aurora-Elgin, 5.2 percent.
Bloomington-Normal, 4.6 percent.
Champaign-Urbana-Rantoul, 4.3 percent.
Chicago, 6.5 percent.
Davenport, Rock Island, Moline (Illinois sector), 7.8 percent.
Decatur, 8.3 percent.
Joliet, 7.6 percent.
Kankakee, 9.6 percent.
Lake County, 4.5 percent.
Peoria, 6.9 percent.
Rockford, 7.4 percent.
Springfield, 5.0 percent.
St. Louis (Illinois sector), 9.3 percent.
Source: Department of Employment Security.

Margaret S. Knoepfle

October 1988 | Illinois Issues | 6