Human Activity Kills

     Now that summer is on it's way to the Quad Cities, more procautions should be enforced now more than ever to ensure the protection of our nation's water-ways. The Mississippi River has more of an impact on the world than many citizens from our area understand.  A portion of water known as the Dead Zone has been expanding since 1993 and is located where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico. The Dead Zone is caused by unbalanced levels of nitrogen and phosphorous from the Mississippi River. Illinois farmers, as well as farmers who use nitrogen based fertilizers from Iowa, Minnesota, Winsconsin, Mississippi, and Tennessee spray their crops to protect crops, but the runoff causes long-term side effects. When the runoff reaches the Mississippi River, there is a process where the chemicals mix in the water, resulting in oxygen depleted water. These low levels of oxygen in the water makes aquatic life unmanagable. Thirty-nine percent of this problem comes from our area. The Quad Cities lies almost directly on the Mississippi River, so we are the ones with the power to prevent the majority of the pollution.

     The Dead Zone is visible from numerous satellte images and software, and the images are dramatic. There is a perfect divide from where the oxygen-rich water of the Gulf of Mexico meets the hypoxic water from the river; the water color shifts from blue to brown. The Dead Zone varies in size every year, but usually covers an estimated six thousand to seven thousand miles. In May of 2012, an estimated fifty-eight thousand, one hundred metric tons of nitrogen entered the Gulf of Mexico with help from the Mississippi River. This creates a huge impact on aquatic life, but also fisheries in Texas and Louisiana.

      And if the nitrogen in the water isn't killing our aquatic life, plastic and other forms of pollution from the river is. You wouldn't want to be submerged in water contaminated by sewage, manures, and runoff, and neither do the fishes, turtles, and birds! The animals don't understand not to eat a floating bottle cap, a cigarett butt, or scraps of aluminum. Everyday, animals will ingest, suffocate, or become entangled by junk that citizens throw on the ground, which eventually runs off into rivers, and then to the ocean. Citizens who waste eight thousand gallons of water a year waiting for the hot water to run will create long term problems but we should be more forcused at the moment with what we are contaminating out water with.