Water!!!!!!

The water that I use at my house comes from the water municipal of Western Municipal Water District of Riverside County.  It serves the cities of: Corona, East-Vale, Jurupa Valley, Lake Elsinore, Norco, Perris, Riverside, Murrieta and Temecula. Each city may use other private companies or other municipals, but mainly it comes from WMWD. Murrieta is part of the Western Municipal- Murrieta Division. The entire WMWD serves a population size of approximately 878,000 people. The Murrieta Division serves 7,128 citizens and their water source they use is purchases surface water.  Water within the Murrieta area is pretty safe to drink. In the annual report it indicated that all water in Western Services area is well below 45mg/L level. This is indicating that nitrate in the drinking water is safe to drink; anything above 45mg/L isn’t healthy for an infant or anyone of AIDS or any immune disorder. Most of the water in the Western Service area comes from Northern California via the State Water Project, the Colorado River and local ground water. The United States Environmental Protection Agency also known as (EPA) is in charge of all the drinking water supply. Our government always wants to protect its citizens, so they passed a law that indicates that all the water must be safe for the citizens of our country to use, and the law is the Safe Drinking Water Act. The Food and Drug Administration is in charge of bottled water. The FDA and EPA require the same health safety requirement, but the FDA is not required to test the water quality. The EPA must test the quality of the water due to the Safe Drinking Water Act. Final thought, in my opinion water is water; as long as my water is cleaned and purified I will drink it. I personally do not believe in having bottled water to use while I’m at home. The only time I will use bottled water if I am not home. There are some exceptions to bottled water, some people might have to drink it for health issues or the water in their area isn’t safe to drink. I personally get my water from my fridge which has a filtration process, but that water itself comes from the Western Municipal Water District Murrieta Division. Also, bottled water has a downside; it leaves us with all the plastic bottles that are harmful to our environment. Some companies claim that they are using clean filtered water, for the water bottles but in reality they may use tap water. In the movie that we watched last class gave us an example of a company that used tap water in their product, later the FDA found out and they were forced to pay a cost due to their manipulation of clean purified bottled water. Also in the movie, as I stated above, bottled water is harmful to our environment. It can damage our ecosystems, us, and other living organisms.

How is RCC ECO- Friendly?

How environmental friendly is our campus of RCC? What can us students do to help it become more of one? Well I can list five examples of how RCC can be environmental friendly. One thing we can do is recycle more of the plastic bottles we throw away and all the paper we use. An alternative that we can do to help with the recycling is having recycling bins around the campus (as the club on campus provides).  Transportation can be another example, instead of everyone driving to campus; students can carpool with each other that live near the area. This will allow less carbon monoxide around the campus so it doesn’t affect our plants that are provided for the students and the faculty to enjoy.  Third, can be providing produce with less packaging. Although it may not affect our campus as a whole but it can affect our budget and our waste management.  Fourth thing is how our buildings can be more energy efficient.  With our buildings being so large and use so much energy we can see what we can do to use alternative energy to help our campus.  Final example is what type of renewable energy our campus uses. On a positive note, the building that we have most of our math and science classes is very energy efficient. Yes, our Math and Science building is the campus first LEED building that all RCC campuses provide.   LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, there are 20 LEED facilities around the Inland Empire. Some of the features that the building provides are “the low-flow toilets, sensors on restroom faucets, high-efficiency lighting and mechanical equipment, and effective use of natural day lighting strategies” information provided by Michael Stephens. The four story building has a big impact for our environment and it helps provide more classrooms for students for core classes. The University of Maryland is constructing a building that provides LEED facilities. They are going to enhance their building by providing solar energy into their buildings and having a greener environment by providing plants around the buildings and courtyards.

 

Sources:

"New Nursing and Science Buildings Rated Eco-Friendly." New Nursing and Science Buildings Rated Eco Friendly. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Oct. 2012.

<http://www.rccd.edu/administration/strategiccomm/news/Pages/NewNursingandScienceBuildingsRatedEco-Friendly.aspx>.