Pollution
is not a new concept to anyone on this planet.
When we think about pollution, the first thing that comes to most of our
minds is air pollution. While this is a
big problem around us, no one has really talked about water pollution. Fertilizer run-off from crop fields is
detrimental to the aquatic food chain.
Adding nitrogen, phosphorus, and other elements into an environment
might not seem like a big deal because they are naturally occurring chemicals in
these areas. Some addition of elements might
not seem like a lot, but when do we, as Americans, ever just hurt an
environment a little bit.
Fertilizer
that farmers use is beneficial for growing crops when the soil is lacking in
some nutrient. Soil is the only place
where fertilizer is a beneficial tool; when it rains and the chemicals run into
our water tables and our lakes and streams, problems start to occur. With the addition of nitrogen to an aquatic
environment, alga starts to grow in abundance.
When there are more algae, they consume a lot more of the oxygen in the
water, so less oxygen is available for the other species. Slowly, the alga die, and the oxygen being
used to decompose the dead plant is taking away from the precious little oxygen
that the other species need to survive.
Fish, other plants, and other aquatic species get suffocated by the
oxygen depletion in the water that was caused by the presence of fertilizer.
I
have witnessed this very problem in the river that flows behind my house. Every spring when the snow melts on the
fields, the water enters the river, and the water level rises by about three
feet. Usually, the water in the Devils
River is very clean and clear. When that
snow filled with fertilizer and mud enters this river, the water is cloudy,
dirty, and has a very awful smell to it.
After this water rushes past our house, alga starts to grow around the
rocks and logs in the river. My dad and
I go down to the river every year to remove some of the suffocating alga,
because we want the river to be healthy and clean for the crayfish and leeches
to live in.
I
understand that farmers cannot control the weather, so some of the fertilizer
on their fields could very well enter water sources without their control. I suggest that a guideline be created for
farmers to follow. If they can only put
a certain amount to fertilizer on their fields each season, the food chain in
our local waters may return to normal.
The farmers that grow their crops around my home are adding new batches
of fertilizer every growing season, and this gets to be a lot of chemicals that
are added, that do not necessarily need to be added. If farmers fertilize their fields every other
season, then the aquatic ecosystem would have time to adjust, and grow back.
