Example research essay topic: Bottled Water Billion Dollars - 1,151 words

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In your opinion are water resources over or undervalued in the United States? Water is the most important life element to humans after oxygen. Without water human can live only up to 3 days after which they would die. Today water represents a great and profitable industry for the fact that the producers of the main US soft drinks need water, as well as the ordinary citizen who use water for their household needs, let alone for the lawn use. In the following essay I am going to speak about the water industry as being overvalued with respect to the green (social) economy based on various examples, literary findings as well as my personal opinion on the given matter. Water in the USA in my personal opinion is undervalued for numerous reasons, most of which are unrealized.

Any typical American family, and it is a par to the US mentality and identity in my persona opinion is dreaming of having a suburban personal house with a wonderful back yard and with the picturesque front yard lush green lawns. It should be noted that Americans in the past year have spent more on their lawns than they have at the movies, an astonishing 17. 4 billion dollars (Thompson, 2001). The preservation of the suburban lawn oftentimes means the use of various organic and inorganic fertilizers like nitrates that greatly benefit the growth of the greenery on the lawn as well as increasing the fertility of the regular turf. As a rule, the fertilizers are almost always mixed with various pesticides and herbicides to assure the quality and beauty of the personal front yard lawns.

At the same time, these pesticides, and fertilizers when applied almost always penetrate the ground and threaten to contaminate the ground waters below, thus making the whole area possess water not-suitable for household use. The largest cities unlike smaller towns indeed have to rely on the groundwater as their primary source of household water. The fertilizers can contaminate the water via runoffs soil storage, and dust, thus posing serious threat to the health of people. The fact that nitrogen negatively affects human fact, yet it is not usually accounted as a cost or expense by the water companies that operate in the given region, while in fact the cost / expense of human health affects the whole territory, thus factually reducing the income and therefore the overall value of the water in the USA. Even though, it is people who pay for their health, it is still the society that losses from peoples sick leaves and the like. Maintaining high quality surface and groundwater supplies is a concern at the national and local level (Mattingly, 2000).

It should be noted that in the USA groundwater accounts for 86 % of the total water resources and provides from 25 % to 95 % of the drinking water supply for urban and rural areas. (Breen, 2002). In New York, The groundwater is only source of drinking water for both Nassau and Suffolk (Breen, 2002). The development of these counties with their growing populations has had an effect on groundwater quality over the past century. During this time, much of the landscape has changed from rural agriculture to suburban development.

These development patterns are particularly noticeable in Nassau and Western Suffolk Counties where the largest single crop cultivated is ornamental turf namely because of the growth of populations wealth. (Raul, 2001) Nitrate concentrations in the regions groundwater have increased markedly during this period of development, and a significant amount of this increase is attributed to lawn and garden fertilizer as well as local sewage's. (Thompson, 2001) It should be noted that of the nitrogen species, nitrate poses the greatest threat to groundwater and drinking water quality due to its mobility and human health threat (Coleman, 2000). Another thing worth mentioning is the bottled water industry. It is estimated by the Beverage Marketing association that in years 1988 - 1998 the US consumption of bottled water more than tripled with more than 50 % of the US population drinking bottled water and spending on it approximately 4. 5 Billion dollars annually. The fact that bottled water costs from 250 to 10, 000 times as much as water from the faucet does not discourage the Americans to spend that much money on the bottles. The customers indeed like the water for the fact that it portrays a clear image as well as lists all the ingredients on the bottle. More than 1 / 3 of the total US bottled water consumption occurs in California with LA and San Diego spending the most on the water namely because of the high levels of contamination of the local water from the lawn runoffs.

Thus, although much expensive than the tap water, the bottled water is much well accepted by the populace for the fact that its use usually is associated with safety and trust, while the tap water industry is associated with the governmental red tape and bad taste. Yet regardless of the source, unless it is distilled the bottled water still faces similar problems that regular tap water faces-numerous run offs and the so-called transferable (on consumers) costs of water (Belmar, 2002). In conclusion It should be noted that the water industry in the USA is rather profitable and presents great prospects. At the same time the high profits it yields do not usually assure the quality of the water presented for the fact that it with the growth or citizens affluence their desires to own lawns and to fertilize them negatively reflects on the water quality.

The firms that start to deploy additional filtering equipment as a matter of fact loose money with only the bottled water industry making rather high profits which still are comparatively to the tap water industry are small and are facing extra expenditures in the upcoming years. I personally believe that the hidden costs that these companies are facing yet are not disclosing negatively influence the net income of the water industry companies, thus contributing to the lower profit margins and the overall value of the industry. Therefore the water industry in the USA is overvalued with the future profits to be expected to fall mostly because of the increased expenditures, when the water companies would assume responsibility about the ground waters. Until then a reasonable investor would assume a short position in the water companies and long in the filtering equipment companies that are more likely to benefit from the water contamination that the actual water companies. Bibliography: Thompson, The water industry in the USA, McGraw Hill, 2001 Breen, The current environmental issues, Oxford University Press, 2002 Raul, The water industry specifics, Prentice Hall, 2001 Mattingly, The need for change: Ecology, NY Random House, 2000 Coleman, The water pollution in the USA, Penguin Books, 2000 Belmar, The trends in water consumption in the USA, McGraw Publishers, 2002

Research essay sample on Bottled Water Billion Dollars