Mississippi river and water pollution



There are several reasons why the Mississippi river is known worldwide, mainly because It has play an important role at various point of time throughout U.S. history. Today the Mississippi river is known nation wide to be the most polluted river in America. Although we might think this is a recent problem, the truth is that it all started in 1700's with an important increase of settlements along the river. In order to protect their homes, locals began building flood protection and levees. As this flood protection areas and levees got larger, Mississippi's wild nature become more and more restricted.Although this is harmful for the river and species living in and around it, the long term results turned out to be worst, eventually this phenomenon kept the sediment form accumulating, which is essential for a new delta lobe formation and the creation and maintenance of the wetlands in Louisiana's coast.

For the humans, Mississippi levees are helpful and necessary to avoid flooding, and keeping communities safe, but they also interrupt sediments from accumulating and renew deteriorating marshes. The consequence of this is more open water, higher rates of erosion and eventually the loss of an important part of wetlands in Louisiana's coast.

But the rapid loss of wetlands is not the only problem the Mississippi river is facing. After World War II the increase in human population also meant the increase in agricultural and household chemicals that were dumped into the river's stream. Eventually causing bacterial pollution, phosphorus pollution and nutrient pollution. Each of the is hurting the Mississippi to the point that they created a dead zone in the northern part of the Gulf of Mexico.

The Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone is how scientists have named the area the suffers from depletion of the dissolved oxygen in the water. This phenomenon is know as Hypoxia. Some agree that the biggest cause for this "dead zone" and the water pollution in the Mississippi river, is nutrient pollution that the river washes out and into the ocean. Others argue that Bacterial pollution such as E coli from manures and sewages, runoff and current agricultural practices are the reasons for most of the sever problems affecting the Mississippi river.