A study out of LSU shows in the nearly 50 years since the Clean Water Act’s passage the Mississippi River has seen a tremendous improvement in water quality.
Coastal Sciences Professor Eugene Turner said the Act’s environmental regulations limiting what you could dump into US waterways worked wonders.
“The bacteria numbers were like one hundredth or one-thousandth of what they were. The lead concentration has gone down a similar amount, the oxygen levels have gotten better. It’s amazing really,” said Turner.
The Clean Water Act was enacted in 1972.
Turner said before the 70s there was so much waste, and lead in particular, that waterways like the Mississippi River had become highly toxic.
“At one point there was so much being put in rivers that the Cuyahoga River caught fire in 1959. Time Magazine said anyone who falls into the Cuyahoga does not drown, they decay,” Turner.
High levels of lead have been linked with serious developmental problems in children and mental decline in adults.
Turner said the River faces a new threat: escalating levels of fertilizer run-off heading downriver from Midwestern farming. He said this highly concentrated fertilizer isn’t good for either of us.
“On the short term they get more above-ground production of crops but in the long term they are going to have, and are having much poor soil quality,” said Turner.
A new report shows as much as a third of topsoil in the Midwest has been lost due to over-farming.
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