Pernicious, pervasive polluted runoff

Melissa Malott

With nearly 15,000 lakes, and more than 33,000 miles of rivers, Wisconsin is a water rich state. These flowing waterways support our lifestyle and economy; where they once transported logs for the paper industry, today boaters and fishers skim the surface. Beneath the surface, however, and sometimes floating on it, lies a heavy load of phosphorus, sediment, bacteria and other pollutants. Polluted runoff into our lakes and streams is drowning our state.

As we Wisconsinites prepare our schedules and gear for summer on or near the water, and think about the good times we’ll soon be sharing with friends and family, we forget the negative memories from the summer before: stinking algae clumps littering our beaches, slime clinging to the edges of our lakes, and mosquitoes. Unlike mosquitoes, however, we can do something about the algae and other noxious materials in our waterways. These problems stem from polluted runoff, and we can prevent them by taking measures to cut down on polluted runoff.

Polluted runoff, or nonpoint source pollution, is generally the most significant water quality problem in Wisconsin. Nonpoint pollution is a product of our lifestyles, our land use planning, and agricultural system. The way we fertilize our lawns and fields, allow stormwater to drain off the streets, dispose of chemicals and other products all has an impact on our waterways. Unfortunately, this area of water pollution is under-regulated.

The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District recently did tests on where pollution in the Milwaukee-area rivers come from. MMSD's tests for some of the major pollutants in our waterways, including phosphorus, fecal coliform, BODs (biochemical oxygen demand organisms), suspended solids, and nitrogen, and found that between 80-90% of these pollutants come from agricultural and urban stormwater runoff.

While this does not discount the importance of reducing sewer overflows, it is interesting to know other areas of pollution that we can reduce in order to clean up our waterways. Urban pollution occurs because pavement, roofs, and reduced green space prevent absorption of rainwater into plants and the ground. Instead, these large volumes of waters collect in stormwater systems, and flow rapidly to waterways. Besides the listed pollutants, urban polluted runoff often hold some more insidious pollutants, like fertilizer and pesticides, oil, bacteria and organic material, sediment, and more. Furthermore, runoff from developed areas may be warmer than stream water, and when the heat mixes with increased flow rates and pollutants, can further affect water quality and aquatic life.

Agricultural runoff can contain some of the same materials, but is most notable for runoff of manure that has been spread on fields. Agricultural runoff can contain E. coli and other bacteria, along with large amounts of phosphorus.

So what can we do?

Because polluted runoff comes from our actions, if we want to cut down on polluted runoff is to change our actions. Fortunately, many of the actions we can take will have multiple benefits.

Household actions

Basically, we can all take actions to conserve and protect runoff water from pollution. A great way to reduce runoff water from our own residences is to collect rainwater in rainbarrels. Rainbarrels collect and store the water from your roof for later use in watering your lawn or garden. Rainbarrels help save significant water costs – throughout a typical Wisconsin season, rainbarrels can store 1,300 gallons of water. You can often buy rainbarrels from local gardening stores, make one, or simply use a large bucket. For instructions on making a rainbarrel, see: http://www.cwp.org/Community_Watersheds/brochure.pdf.

Besides collecting water that could carry polluted runoff, there are ways to prevent the pollution from reaching the road. First of all, create as many porous surfaces as possible: use bricks or concrete lattice in walkways to allow water to soak into the ground. Create vegetative buffer strips and raingardens to allow any runoff to be absorbed by the ground and plants. Raingardens serve a few functions: they beautify our lawns and make them spongelike at the same time. A raingarden or buffer strip is simply an area of plants that soak up water like trees, shrubs, and groundcover plants and flowers.

And of course, be conscious of pollutants that you are using in your yard. Replace phosphorus lawn fertilizers with non-phosphorus, natural fertilizers. Keep pet wastes and litter away from runoff areas. Clean up spilled toxins like oil, grease, antifreeze, and other chemicals that would otherwise wash into our waterbodies.

Advocate for responsible local ordinances

In addition to controlling polluted runoff from your own residence, you can help your community be more responsible with polluted runoff by advocating for pollution prevention over pollution treatment, education, public participation, monitoring, and enforcement components.

In the end, we have the opportunity to create major change in our own waterways. While pushing for strong protection via regulations is important, we can make a difference in through our own actions. Because urban and agricultural runoff are a result of the way we live, if we change some of our actions, we can change polluted runoff. Go forth and prevent pollution!!!