Lifeline of Rivers essays

Lifeline of Rivers essays The Lifelines of Rivers deals with a wide array of rivers. It also looks at the animals that live and depend on the rivers. Another important aspect covered in this chapter is the pollution and problems we have with the rivers. The first part of the chapter looks at the vital needs served by the rivers. Anything living needs water, and the rivers are the water supply of the earth. The rivers move water from mountains, forests, grasslands, deserts, and lakes all of the way back to the ocean. Our rivers supply around half of our nations drinking water. The riparian or riverfront is what feeds all of the water nourished plants that grow along the rivers. These plants are very important to 70 percent of all land-based wildlife. In North America, there are over 790 species of fish that live in our freshwater that depend on the rivers. Today we have a lot of problems with our rivers. There are unhealthy rivers all over the world. Roughly 40 percent of the streams surveyed failed to meet standards for swimming. Half of our nations streams also failed the biological health test. Due to the Clean Water Act in 1972, most cities and industries have made big steps in trying to reduce pollution. The countries overall water health is poor. A lot of this is due to polluted runoff, farms, chemicals, and the electronic age. Polluted runoff accounts for 78 percent of the pollution. This is very tough to control because it not only deals with the water, but also how we use the land as well. One of our biggest problems today might be the hog business. Due to lobbying by agribusiness and farm organizations, federal laws dont require treatment for the waste they get rid of. The hog waste is 150 times more in volume than human waste and ruins 35,000 miles of river. One of our biggest errors we made when trying to deal with floods is that we went out and built more dams and levees. All these dams and levees do is giv...