Missouri River: One of American's "most polluted"

Yessiree, our own Missouri River is ranked as one of "America's Top 10 Most Polluted Waterways." To anyone who knows anything about it, that should come as no surprise. I once heard a statistic--I'll have to verify it--that once the water gets here, it's already been through 5 human systems. If true, that's the least of our concers. Anyway it's in the latest edition of "Mother Jones" but the original data is from the Environment America Research and Policy Center. (Both links below). Why the Missouri, you ask? Well, it gets 4,887,971 pounds of total toxic discharges put into it every year and 19,553,305 pounds of toxic discharges put into it from its entire watershed region. Unfortunately, the "Big Muddy" isn't the only river in the region that is cited in the report. It seems the Kansas River also gets 10,485 pounds of "developmental and reproductive toxicant releases" put into it, too. These are "those shown toimpede the proper physical and mental development of fetuses and children" so if we can't do this for ourselves and/or the fish and wildlife, as we ought, maybe we can and should do it for our children and grandchildren.

There are two more rivers, too, in Missouri that receive these developmental and reproductive toxicant releases. They are Crooked Creek and Bee Fork Creek. They're getting these "...because of heavy discharges of lead from mines and smelters operated by the Renco Group and Doe Run Resources Corp." The name of the original report gives you an idea, I think, of just what we're talking about here, too: "Wasting Our Waterways 2012; Toxic Industrial Pollution and the Unfulfilled Promise of the Clean Water Act" The report goes on to emphasize that the Federal Government needs to both follow the original Clean Water Act but also toughen it. We need it. Besides creating fish kills, the discharges we're talking about here are frequently highly carcinogenic, again, no surprise. Corporations won't want it but it's what we need to do, for all of us. In the current environment, I just don't see that happening but there's always hope. This is one more thing we will have to demand of our government representatives and government, in order to get what is needed. It has to come from us. Links: http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/03/top-10-polluted-rivers-waterways; http://www.environmentamerica.org/reports/ame/wasting-our-waterways-2012