Water bodies in the form of lakes, rivers, oceans, seas are polluted with wastes like chemicals, plastics, contamination due to domestic wastes, livestock, herbicides, insecticides, VOCs, metals and others. All living beings need water to survive. It is fundamental for life. The scarcity of water and its contamination limits the access of its availablity and clean drinking water.

Contaminated water kills a lot more people than a war. We all know that less than 1 percent of earth's fresh water is drinkable. And this small percentage is also getting polluted at a high rate. The seriousness of the situation maybe cannot be understood by people who have access to clean, crisp & cool drinking water. But, there are a lot of countries who are suffering from water scarcity like libya, Western Sahara, Yemen, Djibouti and this list is continuously increasing.

India is a developing country with second highest population in the world. As per Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, states which are suffering from massive water scarcity are Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Gujrat. SIS, Seoul International School is fundraising to bring water to India. They have also started building a strong community for the water crisis in India.

Some Categories of Water Pollution

Groundwater

When rain falls and seeps deep into the earth, filling the cracks, crevices, and porous spaces of an aquifer (basically an underground storehouse of water), it becomes groundwater—one of our least visible but most important natural resources. Nearly 30 percent of Americans rely on groundwater, pumped to the earth’s surface, for drinking water. For some folks in rural areas, it’s their only freshwater source. Groundwater gets polluted when contaminants—from pesticides and fertilizers to waste leached from landfills and septic systems—make their way into an aquifer, rendering it unsafe for human use. Ridding groundwater of contaminants can be difficult to impossible, as well as costly. Once polluted, an aquifer may be unusable for decades, or even thousands of years. Groundwater can also spread contamination far from the original polluting source as it seeps into streams, lakes, and oceans.

Surface water

Covering about 70 percent of Earth, surface water is what fills our oceans, lakes, rivers, and all those other blue bits on the world map. Surface water from freshwater sources (that is, from sources other than the ocean) accounts for more than 60 percent of the water delivered to American homes. But a significant pool of that water is in peril. According to the most recent surveys on national water quality from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, nearly half of our rivers and streams and more than one third of our lakes are polluted and unfit for swimming, fishing, and drinking. Nutrient pollution, which includes nitrates and phosphates, is the leading type of contamination in these freshwater sources. While plants and animals need these nutrients to grow, they have become a major pollutant due to farm waste and fertilizer runoff. Municipal and industrial waste discharges contribute their fair share of toxins as well. There’s also all the random junk that industry and individuals dump directly into waterways.