Blog assginment #4: Selection 24 (Summary)

Restoring Rivers

Margaret A. Palmer and J. David Allen

 Image from: Christoph Gerber

This selection talks about fresh water and rivers in the United States.  They talk about how fresh water and rivers were getting cleaner between the times of 1973 and 1998 but states that the trend has reversed, and makes a prediction that the US rivers in 2016 will be as dirty as the rivers in mid 1970s.  

They also state other problems such as water shortages in local communities and how major rivers no longer flow to the sea year round.  They also mention how 1/3 of the rivers in the United States are impaired or polluted.  Aquatic wildlife were also going extinct at a higher rate than terrestrial or marine ecosystems.  

What lead to this problem was because the US streams and rivers were used as dumping grounds for waste, hoping that the river would carry the waste away.  Massive dams that were built to supply power and minimize floods caused loss of native plants and animals downstream since they could not survive or reproduce without the seasonal changes in flow.

Palmer and Allen thinks additional funding would help in restoring rivers and also enable inter/intraagency mechanisms for tracing projects.