Environmental Issues In The Orange County Water District

Environmental Issues
The environment plays an important role in public health as it is considered a predictor of a population’s well-being. Our surroundings regulate our risks of developing chronic and preventable diseases, and determine our overall safety. These are just some of the issues why it is extremely important to take good care of the world in which we live in. The purpose of this paper is to examine the environment of the city of Alhambra, identify the importance of community disaster preparedness, discuss my visit to the Orange County Water District, distinguish the roles and responsibilities of public health nurses in environmental health, and relate how these experiences contribute to my personal and professional growth.
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As what I have learned in class, disasters can range from the forces of nature to being human-generated. The United States has faced a wide array of disasters such as the Great Quake of San Francisco, Hurricane Katrina, 9/11 terrorism, Hurricane Sandy, Orlando nightclub shooting, and most recently the issue between Black people and police officers. A community’s level of disaster preparedness is very important because it is one of the biggest influences in keeping a community safe. Going back to the city of Alhambra, community members have the opportunity to take part in preparing for a disaster by attending either the Community Emergency Response Team training or Emergency Preparedness seminars (Alhambra Chamber of Commerce, 2014). Since we live in California, the greatest threat that we have is the possibility of experiencing a devastating earthquake. Being situated on the San Andreas fault line, the government cannot stress it well enough that everyone needs to be prepared, especially that experts are predicting a major earthquake that could go down as one of the worst disasters in history (Lin, 2016). I personally think that it is not realistic to be fully prepared for disasters, but it is definitely possible to minimize the number of casualties. In this case, public health nurses carry the great responsibility of constantly educating the public and
The 322 million residents of the United States often take clean water for granted without realizing that 780 million people do not have the same luxury (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014; 2015). Having an adequate supply of clean water is essential for a community to survive (United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2015). Honestly, I do not drink tap water because I have always thought that it is not clean enough to be in my body. The water tour debunked a lot of myths that I believed in- I used to think that tap water is not safe for me because it has a metallic taste. Although I saw how meticulous the process was of having sewage water purified and even tasting it, the thought of drinking something from the sewer is something that my mind is having difficulty to shake. I think that this is an area that will challenge public health nurses, especially if they don’t believe in what they teach. According to Tinker, Postma, and Butterfield (2011), one facilitator of delivering effective environmental risk reductions is for the nurses to believe in what they relay to the community. I now know that tap water in the United States is one of the cleanest and safest water in the world, but some old habits are really hard to break and it will take me time to transition into drinking tap. However, I agree that the Groundwater Replenishment System in Orange County is an excellent way of assisting our