The Issue Of Contaminated Water In South Carolina
The issue of contaminated water in South Carolina has been a prominent subject of caution and discussion in the media the last few years due to the hurricanes hitting the North Carolina shores. Being a state that tends to get the end of the bad weather, North Carolina has to take more precautionary measures to protect its resources from contamination. Throughout this letter, I would like to introduce to you the effects of weak sewer and pump systems and the negative impacts animal waste lagoons and coal ash waste sites can have on the surrounding areas.
I am a college student at the University of Georgia. Even though I am an Accounting major, I am very interested in discussions and subjects associated with ecology, environmentalism, and sociology. Water pollution is a form of pollution that is very dire in that it needs to be addressed immediately. Society, humanity, and all living organisms cannot survive without adequate water. The United States is a core country, and since it is so advanced, we should not be having simple pollution issues like water pollution in today's world. I care about this issue because whenever I was growing up, I was always reading about the dangers of unclean water and how it is so prominent in other countries like Mexico. It scared me as a kid because I read about the dangers of digesting water infected with fecal bacteria and was simply thankful for not having to worry about that where I lived.
As I have grown up, I have realized the false truth in this. You always have to be on the lookout for issues like pollution, but what if that could go away? Everyone has this fear resonating throughout their every consumption, but with a few simple steps, we can prevent to almost eliminate water contamination in North Carolina. I have been keeping up with the effects of hurricanes since Hurricane Irma last year, but this year, with the recent hit of Hurricane Florence, I completed more in-depth research about the effects of hurricanes on water contamination. I found out that North Carolina has a lot of lagoons full of pig and animal waste that is located on farms. These lagoons are large pits of animal fecal matter and urine that is used for fertilization by farmers. They attach sprinkler pipes to the pools and sprinkle the remains on the fields to help fertilize the soil.
This whole method tends to backfire when the ground is dry because the fecal matter becomes absorbed into the ground and contaminates the groundwater and seeps into the nearby streams. Dr. Mallin says that this is not an effective way of treating the fields with waste because they are pollution time bombs waiting to go off. The worst thing about pig farming plantations is that they pump all of the materials in the lagoons on the fields before big storms, and when the storm comes, if the merial is not absorbed, it runs off into the surrounding waterways. Without the elimination of these lagoons, we will have a recurrence of this runoff fecal bacteria into the water and the pollution with only affect the water worse as time goes by.
