As a rower, I am always on the water. I help place our boat in the water, I get splashed by our oars on the water, and often river water soaks my feet taking out our boat. Most people would think that this is no big deal, but the sad reality is that the Mississippi river has become so polluted it is dangerous. How has it become this way? Well, it is the direct result of people and systems ignoring what they do to the environment. Here is how Minnesotans are destroying the Mississippi.
The largest and most consuming part of the problem is that the storm drains go right into the Mississippi. For those of you who do not know, a storm drain contains any type of water and runoff found in the streets of cities and towns. They key fact here is that is it not just rain water. These storm drains are unfiltered, non-disinfected, and carry many pollutants into the water. This includes the large influxes of trash that I see every day.
Furthermore, even though our sewage lines do not directly dump waste into the Mississippi, they also play a part in what we are doing to the river. According to the Minneapolis government web page on our sewage system, our feces water is filtered, bleached, and loaded with chemicals. After this process is over they still dump this claimed to be "sanitized" water back into the Mississippi, along with the chemicals used to clean it.
Who supervises this you ask? Well it operates under the eye of the Metropolitan Council Environmental Services (MCES). They directly prevent any storm drains from being filtered and say very little about what the sewage systems actually do to the Mississippi after they pump the "filtered" sewer water. I laughed out loud when I read on their page because it was such a joke. Their home page states that "Clean water and a clean environment are essential to a healthy life, and the Metropolitan Council is committed to both." More like they are committed to doing a half ass job by denying to clean the storm drain runoff and fully monitoring the filtered water they pump in the Mississippi.
What is alarming is that the Minneapolis government directly states that these drains pollute the Mississippi in their list of questions about the sewage system. They are flat out saying what they do to the largest river in America and nobody is caring! Nobody is taking the time to realize that the systems we have in place have a complete disregard for the environment, and we let them keep acting that way.
As a rower, I don't always feel safe on the water. Last week the UMN rowing team found another dead body. Yes, a stone cold lifeless body was found yet again by a group of college students. This has personally freaked me out being on the water, and the sickening thing is that this is not just a one time occurrence. Furthermore, our coach always warns us about getting the water on our skin and on cuts we have. It has made people sick in the past when the water has gotten into open wounds. This is WATER we are talking about people.
Minneapolis needs to wake up. The Mississippi is not only a tourist attraction, but it is a reflection of what our society is valuing, or rather devaluing. We are letting our infrastructure systems and government policies mandate the treatment of the largest fresh water river in America. Are we really willing to lose something that was here before any of us? Its time for a change.
