Watershed on the Pensacola Bay
Statement of the Problem
A variety of river streams, bay areas, and lakes that are carrying heavy amounts of different kinds of sediments are effecting and endangering animals and human health due mostly to human behavior. Rivers, lakes and bays are undergoing sedimentation because of land clearing associated with agriculture, silviculture, and recreation, as well as dirt toad erosion. “According to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the areas that include the greatest concern for sediments are Bayou Chico, lower Bayou Grande, upper Bayou Texar mid- and upper Escambia Bay, and Pensacola Bay, neat the downtown Pensacola waterfront” (Florida Department of Environmental Protection, 2014).
Researchers claim that sedimentation is a big problem in the Pensacola Bay area resulting from poor flushing and the input of larger sediment load coming from tributaries. “Current and historical land uses and industrial practices have left behind polluted sediments in a variety of these areas” (Florida Department of Environmental Protection, 2014). I want to find out what exactly is causing this problem in our area, what actions are the state of Florida taking towards this problem, and what are the steps needed to stop this problem and prevent this problem from happening.
Literature Review
W.M. Landing, J.M. Caffrey, S.D. Nolek, K.J. Gosnell, and W.C. Parker (2010) stated that, “in order to understand and quantify the impact of local, regional, and far-distant atmospheric mercury sources to rainfall mercury deposition in the Pensacola, Florida watershed, they created a program of event-based rainfall sampling was started in 2004” (Landing, Caffrey, Nolek, Gosnell, pg. 4867; 2010). The m...
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... reduce the mercury and other mineral influx in the Pensacola region. Anything pertaining to my health is very important to me. In my opinion, I feel that this issue should be made known to the public so that people will know what is harming their health.
Works Cited
Landing, W. M., Caffrey, J. M., Nolek, S. D., Gosnell, K. J., & Parker, W. C. (2010). Atmospheric wet deposition of mercury and other trace elements in Pensacola, Florida. Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics, 10(10), 4867. doi:10.5194/acp-10-4867-2010
Eidse, F. (2002). Looking at the big picture : the Pensacola Bay watershed / Northwest Florida Water Management District. Havana, Fla. : Northwest Florida Water Management District, 2002.
Learn About Your Watershed. (2014, January 1). Pensacola Bay Watershed. Retrieved April 29, 2014, from http://www.protectingourwater.org/watersheds/map/pensacola/
Television commercials, print ads, and billboards in the Washington, DC, area are asking residents to connect two things many might find unrelated: lawn care and seafood. In one commercial, a man stuffs a big plateful of grass in his mouth after a voice-over says, “Spring rains carry excess lawn fertilizers through our sewers and rivers and into the Chesapeake Bay, where the blue crab harvest has been extremely low. So skip the fertilizer until fall, because once they’re gone, what’s left to enjoy?”(Environment, p. 7)
Kennedy, Victor S. and Kent Mountford. (2001). Human Influences on Aquatic Resources in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed
Nebel, Bernard J., and Richard T. Wright. Environmental Science. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998.
The Everglades, also known as the River of Grass, is one of South Florida's most treasured areas. It is an area still full of wonder and mystery. The Everglades is lined with a specific type of limestone bedrock formed by tiny organisms called byrozoans. These animals, though not related to coral, act like coral by extracting dissolved limestone from the sea water around them and using it to construct protective chambers in which to live. They then attach to various kinds of sea grasses on the ocean floor and coat them as well. Individual chambers combine together to form rock-like structures. Over thousands of years, when South Florida was completely submerged, a vast amount of this limestone combined with other ocean sediments and was laid down over the area now covered by the Everglades. Prior to the draining activities of humans and its use as an agricultural area, the Everglades was flooded about nine to eleven months of the year. It also lost only about 0.03 inches of soil per year. After the drainage the Everglades began losing soil at approximately 1 inch per year. Now, however, it is only losing 0.56 inches per year.
Joe, Brancatelli. "What Is Polluting Our Beaches?" Popular Science 1 Mar. 2003. Database. 23 Oct. 2005.
Maintaining ecological diversity is necessary for the survival of a biological community. In the United States, American citizens are on the verge of irrevocably damaging one of the country's most unique and diverse treasures - the Florida Everglades. This national park is now the only remaining patch of a river that used to span 120 miles from Lake Okeechobee to the Florida Bay. Dikes and levees created by the Army Corps of Engineers in the late 1940's drained this river to reduce flooding and increase useable water for the development of the region. This major diversion of water lead to a trickle down effect causing the continual decline of the environmental state of the Everglades. Since then, debates over the Everglades' future have silently raged on for years about how, why, and when the restoration will begin. This ongoing, but virtually unproductive effort has cost taxpayers a great deal without any apparent benefits. Recently, this debate has been amplified by the voices of the sugar industry in Florida, which was attacked for its major contribution to pollution of the Everglades. Now debates rage on with a new effort called the Restudy. Backed by the Army Corps of Engineers, this effort would change the flow of the Everglades, potentially restoring it into the viable community of life that it used to be. The question now is, will this latest attempt to restore the Everglades ever be realized (thus ending the cyclic Everglades debate) or will it simply add up to one more notch on the bedpost of inadequate and failed attempts to save this national treasure. The world is watching to see how the United States will handle this unprecedented cleanup.
Problems like these are just one of the many causes of water pollution. Coal, storm water, and pigs are some of the biggest threats to the Cape Fear River, the ocean, and other bodies of water that surround Wilmington. In this paper, we will focus on causes and effects of water pollution then look at some possible solutions for the problems, particularly here in Wilmington.
The tidal salt marshes make vital contributions to the ecosystem in Jamaica Bay. The marshes help spawning processes and are primary nursery for species important to both recreational and commercial uses, providing protection from storm surges, and also removing pollutants and other toxic substances, which as a result, acts as a natural filter, improving the water quality in the bay. Salt marshes are low lying, grasslands that periodically become overwhelmed and drained by high tides. The fish and shellfish nurseries and are also a feeding ground for various species of wildlife in the ecosystem. They support a variety of invertebrates such as mussels, shrimp, oysters and horseshoe crabs that are key elements of the estuarine ecosystem. However, throughout the past few decades, the salt marshes at Jamaica Bay has significantly declined which created a tremendous negative impact on the general public in addition to the deterioration on the living habitats in the area. Many factors contribute to the decline such as sediment depletion, neighboring developments, increased tidal ranges, and especially nitrogen loading from untreated sewage. Although the damages done were unintentional, much of it was occurred due to negligence. As awareness has increased, restoration efforts have escalated as well as various groups respond well to mitigate the losses.
Kennedy, Victor S. and Kent Mountford. (2001). Human Influences on Aquatic Resources in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed
The Chesapeake Bay is a very large estuary that holds more than eighteen trillion gallons of water (“The Bay Watershed”). This large estuary is part of six of the different states of Maryland, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia (“Chesapeake Bay Program”). Some characteristics of the bay are salinity, temperature, and circulation. The bay watershed is home to seventeen million people and gains more people each year, so it is no wonder why there are pollution problems (“Chesapeake Bay Program”). The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States and is diverse with life. Though the bay is filled with life, it faces many problems caused by humans.
Over the past 100 years the Louisiana coastline has suffered greatly from biotic, abiotic, and anthropogenic factors. The abiotic factors include things such as hurricanes or overnutrition that influence the surrounding biota. The biotic factors that contribute to coastal erosion are things like the immigration invasive species and the emigration or extinction of local flora and fauna that help preserve the wetlands. Additionally, there are anthropogenic factors such as pollution that can have strong negative influences on the abiotic and biotic factors of the wetlands. Each one of these factors cause ecological disturbances to the wetlands at a frequency and intensity that is unmanageable for the local flora and fauna. There are currently certain measures that are being taken into consideration to slow or stop the erosion of the Louisiana coastline.
The major source of mercury is the natural degassing of the earth's crust, including land areas, rivers, and the ocean, and this source is estimated to produce on the order of 2700 to 6000 tons per year. The total man made release into the atmosphere is about 2000 to 3000 tons, and it is difficult to assess what quantities of mercury come from human activities and what quantities from natural resources. Run-off into natural bodies of water may contain mercury from both anthropogenic and natural sources, so it is difficult to assess how much released into the atmosphere is from man made or natural sources. Nevertheless, mining, smelting, and industrial discharge have been factors in the environmental contamination in the past. For instance, it is estimated that loss in water effluent from chloralkali plants, one of the largest users of mercury, has been reduced to 99% in recent years. Industrial activities not directly employing mercury or mercury products give rise to substantial quantities of this metal. Fossil fuel may contain as much as 1 ppm of mercury, and it is estimated that about 5000 tons of mercury per year may be emitted from burning coal, natural gas, and from the refining of petroleum products. Calculations based on the mercury content of the Greenland ice cap show an increase from the year 1900 to the present and suggest that the increment is related both to an increase in background levels of mercury in rainwater and to man made r...
“ The state of Florida needs to take at the factors that have caused this”. What this is that the toxic waste the polluted Florida needs to be check out. In Pensacola , a superfund site abuts a play area where most of the children are black. Toxic chemicals produced throughout the world are found in extremely high levels in Inuit people’s bodies and in
“California Water Boards Fact Sheet.” California Water Boards. waterboards.ca.gov, 23 May 2013. Web. 25 Apr. 2014.
The oceans need to be protected because it is where life began and if not taken care of, life as we know it will end. When dangerous substances go into the ocean, ecosystems are suffer and become endangered along with lives of people and of marine life. Surfrider Foundation recognizes the importance of protecting and preserving the quality and biodiversity of the world's coasts because they are truly irreplaceable. There is also historical evidence of ocean pollution being present in the past, but the problem still lingers today. Heal the Bay discovered that,“Did you know there is a DDT and PCB hot spot off the coast of Palos Verdes? This superfund site (which indicates it's one of the most polluted places in the United States), is left over from a 1930's era chemical plant. Because DDT takes so long to break down in the marine environment, it persists to this day, contaminating certain species of fish. There are also highly polluted sediments in the Long Beach area, a sign of the heavy shipping in the port. Heal the Bay works on developing effective capping and removal plans to keep those toxins from spreading” (Heal the Bay). DDT is still highly concentrated in the South Bay area and still contaminating different species of fish. Even after more than 80 years DDT, a toxic insecticide, is still very concentrated and during upwellings, DDT particles come back up and continue to harm marine life. If humans are careless about what is thrown on the floor or sprayed on lawns, it can lead to disastrous affects when it comes to the condition of the ocean's ecosystems, and can endanger life itself leading to a problem that only we can mend.