Week 1 Assignment
Week 1 Assignment The issue I chose is on posted streams, rivers, and reservoirs and elevated bacteria levels in the water and on the skin of the fish in these waters. I am glad that this question came up because I love to fish and eat fish. I believe that the environmental sustainability issue is, that the cause of this contamination is due to people’s septic tanks, collection system, and animal waste systems failure. This causes the water to become contaminated infecting the fish. Also urban run off can cause some of these issues. This affects us all that live here and have children that play around these water ways. This also affects the animals that depend on these water ways for their drinking waters, it’s not like the animals know that the water is not safe for drinking. This also affects the people that run the docks down at the lake, they depend on people fishing and boating to make a living. I believe that this could eventually affect my children’s children if something is not done soon. The causes of this issue are that of the people living around the affected areas. One cause of our water ways becoming contaminated is that of over population, people that have septic tanks and these tanks become old and get cracks and holes in them. This causes unwanted medication that has been flushed or birth control that a woman is taking to be absorbed into the ground and then when you have run off the rivers and reservoirs get contaminated. Another cause is that of company’s dumping unwanted waste in to the little creaks and streams. I believe that we can make this right, but the question is can we get enough people to make a difference. They have regulations on how many fish that we are allowed to keep when fishing. They have also made regulations against company’s dumping waste into streams and creaks. They have made regulations on all restaurants on The Watauga Lake reservoir on how much and what kind of fresh fish they can serve. I believe that they have made strict regulations on building houses on the lake to insure this does not continue to become a much larger problem. That is the biggest issue when it comes to regulations in the past they never thought before acting or it all depended on how much money you had (have), rather you got a permit or not. They allow people in campers and house boats on the lake, where do you think people’s waste is going in these cases. I remember when I was a kid I never heard of contamination or bacteria in the water. By making stricter laws