If you were consuming bad or harmful water, wouldn't you want to know, because of health risks?
If you were to go swimming at Wrigtsville Beach, wouldn't you like to know if there are any pollutants and contamination before you were to jump in?
Animals: I'm sure you all heard about the huge pig spill in Pender County, which created pollution in many rivers and streams, killing thousands of fish. Animal waste spills by large livestock farms have been blamed by environmentalists for fish kills, ground water pollution, smelly air, and even human illness.
Why We Should Care? We should all care about contamination. We don't want polluted water and we need to help stop this pollution before "our" children group up without clean water.
Preview: I want to express concerns we are all concerned with. Things we're already worried about and strategies we need to implement to keep clean water for many years to come.
Body: We must first control pollution, not from factories, but form across broad areas. This year, this is a plan to fight water pollution with $2.3 billion dollars, stated Randall Mikkelsen, in a report that outlined President Clinton's new plan for clean water.
Forty percent of the nation's water is still too polluted for fishing and swimming, 25 years after the Clean Water Act of 1972.
"We must address the largest remaining challenge to cleaning our waters. We must curtail form farm, from city streets, from other diffused sources of pollution that get into our waterways," President Clinton stated.
Clinton spoke after touring an environmental education center in Baltimore. There he tested a sample of water which led into the Chesapeake Bay. The water had once been heavily polluted, but now it is pronounced "suitable for life."
This "Clean Water" initiative is largely a reworking of existing programs to better coordinate among local, state, and national governments. The inititative wants to: · limit contamination of fish and shellfish · clean up beaches and coastal waters · control animal waste runoff from big livestock operations
In the Plan: Waterways · We must survey levels of contamination in fish and shellfish NATION WIDE. · We must set limits on polluting nutrients such as: Nitrogen and phosphorous in water bodies (lakes and streams). · We must remove or relocate thousands of miles of roads and trails that contribute to the pollution. · We must make "great" efforts to improve or restored 25,000 miles of stream corridors.
Farms: A recent study by Senator Tom Harkin from Iowa,, found that US farm animals produced 1.37 billion tons of waste annually. Which is about 130 times the amount generated by humans. And a 50,000-acre pig farm being built in Utah, could produce more waste than the city of Los Angeles.
Farms: · Will be discharged permits for individual livestock operations that are blamed for putting animal waste into waterways. · Would expand programs - paying money to farmers to create forest and grasslands along waterways to help protect against run-off pollution.
Wetlands: In the plan for the wetlands: · They want to increase the wetlands by 100,000 acres a year-through restoring and enhancing wetlands that have been developed or polluted.
Future Plans: Next year the White House wants Congress to approve $568 million dollars for additional spending for the clean water act. And a total of $2.3 billion dollars in "new" spending over the next five years.
Where will the Money Go? This money will go to the EPA and Agriculture Department, and other Federal agencies would get part of the increase. Other money would go to state and landowners.
Solutions: There are already plans for this money and some new things are coming about to try to help our problem.
In Baltimore, the Agriculture Department developed a new vary of corn that when used in chicken feed, reduces levels of phosphorous in chicken manure. About 50% less phosphorous would come out the other end," said Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman.
The plan includes a number of modest common-sense proposals to address water pollution including polluted runoff, wetlands protection, beach protection, and contaminated fish consumption.
We NEED to make sure this plan is carried OUT! We should be concerned as citizens and as humans of our surroundings and environment. Every child deserves to grow up with water that is pure to drink, lakes that are safe for swimming, rivers that are teeming with fish. We HAVE to act NOW to combat these pollution challenges with new protections to give all our children the gift of clean, safe water in the 21st century. Is it too much to ask to have CLEAN WATER?
Heather Quinn haq3519@uncwil.edu