American Waters: What Hurts, What Helps
Check out this story from National Geographic’s The Green Guide that discusses the contamination levels of America’s waterways. Pesticides and Mercury are affecting the hormones of fish and disrupting their reproduction, and increased population on the East Coast puts extra pressure on groundwater systems, which are already being invaded by saltwater.
“While we’ve stopped pollutants from many single sources, such as outlets from factories, we are a far cry from ending pollution from scattered sources like agricultural runoff. Can we turn back the clock to save our fish and ourselves from the toxic contaminants and invasive species we dump in our waters, not to mention preventing the waters from being siphoned to extinction by cities, agriculture and industry?”
The story also references America’s Most Endangered Rivers 2007, which features bodies of water from every part of the continental United States and Alaska. For more information on water conservation, visit our Water page.
pel1
posted on July 19th, 2007 at 10:16 am
Another issue that is not addressed in this article is the amount of aquatic herbicides that are being dumped into our waterways to control aquatic plants. It is less expensive up front to use herbicides over the sustainable long term methods, but one has to wonder, what are the long term effects. Especially, with everything else that is in the water. Safety studies are only done on one chemical not on the compounded chemical cocktails that are created in our waterways. So, is it really safe to swim? Especially with small children, who tend to put everything into their mouths (silt, sand) while their little bodies are still developing.