streams
Urban Streams Are Breeding Superbugs
City streams are subjected to a constant onslaught of synthetic chemicals found in pharmaceuticals and personal care products. Wastewater treatment facilities are not designed to filter out these compounds. Instead, they flow into surface waters where they impact aquatic organisms like microbes – which perform key ecosystem services like removing excess nutrients and breaking down leaf litter.
Salt Cocktails Compromise Freshwater
Human activities are exposing US rivers and streams to a cocktail of salts, with consequences for infrastructure and drinking water supplies. Road salt, fertilizers, and mining waste – as well as natural weathering of concrete, rocks, and soils – all contribute to increased salt in waterways. When these different salt compounds combine, their harmful effects can amplify.
Green Solutions To Storm Water Runoff
Philadelphia, America’s fifth largest city, has struggled with storm water runoff problems since the days of Benjamin Franklin. The city’s numerous streams that run into the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers were eventually covered with brick arches or cemented into underground sewers. The network of underground-to-riverfront outfalls through increasingly-larger pipes is pretty much how all U.S. cities have been coping with storm water for over 200 years.
Fracking And Streams
Hydraulic fracturing – better known as fracking – is a method of extracting oil and gas from shale deposits in which millions of gallons of freshwater and chemicals are injected into deep underground deposits. There has been a great deal of concern related to the effects that this process has on water quality and also on the stability of the ground in the vicinity of where it takes place.
Pine Barrens Threatened
Pine barrens occur throughout the northeastern U.S. from New Jersey to Maine. They are plant communities that occur on dry, acidic, infertile soils dominated by grasses, forbs, low shrubs, and small to medium-sized pines. The Pine Bush Preserve in Albany, New York is one of the larger inland pine barrens in the country.
Mobile Apps Empower Citizen Science
Citizen scientists play a vital role in raising awareness about the health of our nation’s freshwater resources. Their efforts can help document water clarity and track harmful algal blooms and other indicators of poor water quality instrumental to sound management.
Road Salt
Snow season is here. The chances are good you’ll find yourself behind a truck spreading salt on the roads in an attempt to deice them. You may even try a little salt on your own front porch. Annually we spread about 20 million tons of road salt in the U.S., and we’ve been doing it since the late 1930s.
