Water_Pollution_in_the_Us

How Water Pollution Affects the United States Many things affect water pollution throughout the United States. This is a huge problem not only for American but for other countries around the world as well. Have you ever wondered what causes water pollution and what must be done to stop it' Throughout the next few minutes of reading I will explain what water pollution is and what must be done to stop it. Water pollution really came into light in the 1980’s. The oil spill of the Exxon Valdez should not only the US but the world how terrible an oil spill can pollute the water. That ship was just a minor problem in terms of water waste and water pollution problems. That same year the spill only took account for 5% of all the water pollution throughout the world. In terms of the United States this only accounted for less than 25 %. That’s not very much conserving the size of the spill and how much damage it did to the environment. Throughout the years chemicals and pollutants were dump out into the ocean and into fresh water streams with no real concern for the environment. Or for the concerns of what effects these types of action would have on us down the road in the future. The world has now gotten bigger and has industrialized and the population has seemed to grow as well. You would think as the world has gotten bigger and technology has progressed water pollution would have become less off a problem as well. Wrong. Water pollution in spite of the newest technologies out there is just as bad as it was almost 30 or so years ago. So what exactly is water pollution' Well, water pollution consists on many things. Mainly it’s raw sewage, sludge, garbage, chemicals, and any other type of pollutants that make it into our water system. These pollutants may have been dumped illegally or may not have. Did you know that our Federal government really only care about water pollution to a certain degree' A lot of town and cities don’t filter raw sewage and anything that goes into your gutter in front of most people’s houses. The problem is that the government our local cities can’t afford to have expensive wastewater treatment plants in every city. It’s just too expensive for them to do this. Instead most of these pollutants that end up in your sewer go into a local stream or river. From there they a swept slowly down into the ocean. Once in the ocean it kills off marine animals and even plants and organism that support these animals. It’s becoming a big problem and not much is being done about it at this time. Or more so not enough. Every year almost 10 billion tons of oil alone has been spilt into some type of waterway. As of June 26th 2010 an estimated 69 million to 131 million gallons of oil has been spilt in the Gulf of Mexico alone from the BP spill. This spill is having a massive ecological effect on marine life a will be affecting sustainability to many types of creatures and plants life’s in that area for a long time to come. Some of the non-living factors that effect water pollution are things like nuclear power plants, volcano eruptions, automobiles, and garbage of any sorts. As you can see these nonliving factors actually make up most of the factors in water pollution. In fact most of the water pollutants we see today are made. These consist of thing like plastic bottles, aluminum, and nets and so forth. Another type of factor that effects the fresh water pollution would be living things. The biggest contributor in this category is us. Humans. That is because we make a lot if not most of the non-living items that contribute most of the pollution to the water system. If we did not exist and the only real water pollution was from other animals and natural non-living occurrences our water would be crystal clean. I mean it would still have other factors of being polluted but no garbage, oil etc. Some of the biggest positive human impacts are activism and awareness. Also under this category is taking action and having a system and the utilities to do so. One good example is one of my local water programs in San Francisco, CA. Weave the SFPUC. Which is the water pollution prevention program' It consists of various treatment plants to clean the polluted water as well as the core goal awareness. They believe that by controlling to root cause of the problem that we can solve the problem. I believe this to be the answer as well. We humans are the cause of 98% of water pollution so only we can fix it. This program puts into place preventive programs and awareness groups that bring that city together to fight water pollution. The current solution and sustainability plans that the United States has are just not cutting it as far doing the job. Most of this falls onto the people at the Federal Environmental level. They oversee all state environmental agencies like the California Environmental Protection Agency. The biggest problem that they are having right now is awareness. They are finding that all the time and money they are spending on awareness is not working to well .They are still searching for the root of the problem and trying to figure out how they can change this. In some cities awareness has been better than others. San Francisco, CA has done an exceptional job of water pollution awareness. They citizens are actually taking part and really being active to prevent further pollution to the water. This is done by recycling programs and program that mainly reduce the waste that would eventually end up in the ocean. The biggest key to this program is the awarness and to people actually willing to listen and follow through with what heard from activist. My plan to reach sustainability would be setting up billboards along the freeway. These billboards would be directed at showing the local people of that community what damage is being done to their community. I believe that if the people know that this is affecting their effect community they are more prone to help out and do what’s needed to prevent further problems down the road. I would put pictures of the damage that has been done by pollution to our wildlife and our local waterways. One example would be a bird with soda bottle plastic around its head at a local lake. If people pictures of this that’s a lake or river that close to where they live they will be more ready to take action. Along with the picture I will have a website posted on the billboard as well. This website will give the community information about water pollution and how it’s directly affecting their community as well as others. From there they will be able to join a local activism group to raise awareness. These groups will then raise awareness and money and continue to grow and eventually have billboard and awareness groups in every city throughout America. I would hope that by this time water pollution gets cut in half and we can reach some type of sustainability here in America. I would guess that something like this could be done relatively fast. Probably in less than a few years. I really do think that this type of plan would work if done properly. And as the support groups grow so do the resources available. The biggest challenge to this type of plan I believe would just being getting it started. You would need to come up with some significant capital and also have a keen idea of how exactly things need to go. The bigger and more activism you start having the more politics will be involved. People will want to change around your ideas of what should be done etc. This is when things can get out on line and really go down hill for your ultimate idea. For this type of plan any type of government support would be great. But not necessarily needed. I think once this type of project gets big and gain publicity that’s when you get the government support. But it’s really needed from the beginning for most projects. If I could only raise awareness in my local community that would be good enough for me. I think if I actually tried this project that would be a feasible goal. Although if it worked out to make it an international thing that would be great to. I just understand how difficult that can be and how many people are already doing these types of things and aren’t really that successful. I believe that eventually with hard work and more activism that water pollution will on day be solved and we will at some point have some type of sustainability plan that will actually work and not just slow the pollution down. For now I think the best thing we can do is try to take preventive measure by raising awareness and taking activism to a whole new level. We have already started doing a great job with technology to clean toxic waste from the water but population growth will always exceed any advances in technology from what I see. Preventive measures will be the number one supportive measure to really take action and doing something about this. Water pollution really remains to be a big problem for us here in the United States until the government finally realizes that we need to take drastic changes. The biggest challenge will be tackling on city at a time and coming up with some type of a plan that will fit that community well and really prevent water pollution from happening in the first place. I believe that within the next 50 years things must change or we are facing a huge problem as far as wildlife and plant species are concerned. Are waterways are becoming polluted so fast action must be taken now and not later. The United States is doing better than some countries as far as this are concerned but we still need to show the world by being examples that we can fix this problem. I think that if we take action other countries will follow and we will be off to a great start. It’s going to happen one step and a time and needs to happen tomorrow. Refrences CE Warren(2009)Biology and Water Polltion ED.gov Ed.epa.go JMHellawell(2010)Biological indicators of water pollution. Osti.gov BGLiptak(2009) Engineering in Water pollution.Chilton Book Comapany Csa.com