Hey, you remember the mnemonic for the great lakes, right? It’s HOMES, for lakes Huron, Ontario, Michigan, and Erie. Well, maybe it should be HOMESS, with the extra S standing for Sewage, because each year something on the order of 10 billion gallons of sewage gets dumped into just lake Erie and its basin each year alone. Yah, you read that correctly. It’s a big problem all across the US, wherever lakes, streams and coastlines exist. And, as the US population increases, so will the amount of merde flowing through our sewer pipes. Our infrastructure in this country is old, old, old and it isn’t up to the strains of our increasing population. We need to get our act together, before the shit really hits the fan. Let’s put some of our tax dollars into improving our sewage-handling facilities. Meanwhile, I’d think twice about taking the family to a natural swimming spot.

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Here is a great story about what can be done with a little interest, effort and optimism. A young man, 16-year old Daniel Burd from Waterloo, Canada, has invented a process to break down plastic bags. The method he refined might be used industrially to prevent the bags from going to landfills and ending up in our waterways and oceans. Here’s to you, Daniel Burd. His is an example where even an individual can make valuable contributions to humanity and motivate people to do the right thing.

• Teenager Environmentalist-Scientist

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is…wait…mwa-haa-haa. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. Heh…hmm, well, it’s doing what it’s been doing for Messers Bush and Cheney since, well, their era began. No surprise, but, we gotta keep sloggin’ on, no?

• EPA HaHaHa

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Here is a little good news via TreeHugger with regard to dumping refuse into the Mediterranean Sea, it is officially now prohibited. Ok, so, why did it take so long to make it ‘official’? Well, they wanted to have a few brains behind the law, so they spent recent years establishing services to haul away trash from ports around the coast. Makes sense, right? I think most practical people know that if you want your scheme to have any hope of success, you have to try to make it easier for people to do the right thing. Oh yeah, and then when they don’t you just fine the bejesus out of them.

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Would you like to see how carbon dioxide emissions correlate with cities and population density in the US? Well, now you can. Scientists from NASA and the Department of Energy (DOE) have created high resolution maps so that scientists, citizens and politicians alike can understand that where people are, so is the highest density of CO2.

• CO2 Map

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The Washington Nationals baseball team has a brand-new stadium to play in. Interestingly, the new digs provides a perfect backdrop for a story on the Anacostia river and watershed. I heard about the NPR Anacostia Story today and decided to look into it a bit, and that’s where I found the following story, written by David A. Fahrenthold of the Washington Post. He does an excellent job of covering the river, its tributaries, and the way it affects those living in the area. To summarize, the river is dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty! It’s plagued with trash, PCBs and sewage, the latter additive being a perfume baseball fans will have to live with, for now. The city wants to develop the area into something more commercial, with shops and I imagine dining and so forth, as has been done in other waterfront-reclamation projects. The update to the stadium project is that, while less green than desired, they did make certain that sewage from the park will not flow into the Anacostia during storms. There are a decent number of people interested in the watershed’s rehabilitation, both private and commercial, but it will be a big task, and it touches on our wrong-headed approach to managing the land around us. We must find a way to pave less in order to allow rainwater to seep into the ground the way it is supposed to, not go rushing down paved streets, blasting its way into storm systems which often cannot handle the increased capacity during heavy rains. It’s engineering of the past, and we know better now. Projects exist out there where permeable pavement exists, and where rooftop gardens are encouraged, and they need to be further developed to handle these issues. Of course, Americans need to change their relationship with their lawns, and their herbicides and pesticides. Lastly, we need to stop throwing garbage, like old tires, car bumpers, shopping carts and plastic bags in our water supplies. I mean, really, what kind of animal trashes their own territory, but knows better?

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It has been known for quite a while that our water is polluted with pharmaceuticals. Here is a story giving more details on the issue. The drugs pass through humans, farm animals, and even our pets and get into our sewage systems, rivers and aquifers. Yes, everything from hormones to antibiotics to cholesterol-lowering drugs to pharmaceuticals for heart and mental health, and in many places around the world, not just in the United States. Also, don’t expect your bottled water to be free from contamination, because it’s just now being lightly tested for in our water supplies, and no method has been developed to remove them yet. The quantities are small, but, scientists simply do not know the long-term effects of being exposed to these drugs on a daily basis. They do know the harmful effects of amphibians being exposed to certain feminizing hormones, the defects in the males being born to these species. We’d better get cracking!

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It would be nice to think that if one really tried, escaping the pollution of urban and suburban areas would simply require getting as far away from them as possible. This, apparently, is not true. A very comprehensive 6-year study done by the US federal government has shown high levels of mercury and DDT in places such as Olympic, Sequoia, and Denali National Parks. Some of the mercury has been attributed to pollution from coal-burning plants in China that has drifted over to the US, attached to rain or snow, eventually falling on high-altitude, mountainous regions. The report also details the levels of contamination of fish, and fish-eating wildlife.

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It seems that the French have their own water problems, just like we do here all over the United States. The Rhone river is apparently in very bad shape, especially when it comes to the level of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the river, and in the fish that swim in it. The government has forbidden fish harvest for human consumption because the level of PCBs found in them is 10-12 times the safe limit. The government also had a hand in this, as it ran an industrial waste processing center on the Rhone’s banks, called Tredi, and dumped PCBs directly into the river. Trust no one, not the government (any of them), not corporations or businesses. If you really want to know if your water is safe, or if your fish has toxins in it, get the stuff tested yourself, and then, you have a chance of knowing. The high level of PCBs in the Rhone was discovered by a local fisherman, who sent some of his fish off to be tested as a ‘just in case’ sort of thing, and wound up inadvertently eliminating his livelihood.

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Ah yes, nothing like a nice swim in warm, Florida waters. Just, mind the sewage discharge. Yes, I know some claim that there is no effect on the Atlantic ecosystem, but, I think most of those types really don’t want to find any problems, because, as in most cases, finding a link to these sewage discharges and environmental damage means dollar signs, lots of them. Water, water, water everywhere, except, most of it is a touch too salty. Water conservation, decontamination and rehabilitation will be one of the big issues of this century, and I think the problems that we are currently up against have snuck up on some of us, especially Americans. Sure, we’ve had droughts before, but, one thing is for certain, we’ve never had this many people living in the US, and as the population rises, so do the water needs for drinking, growing food and generating power, among other things. We have to get cracking on these issues, and I mean yesterday!

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