Essay on Water Pollution
Water Pollution – Connecticut’s streams suffer chiefly from two kinds’ pollution; sewage and industrial waste. Sewage consists of the waterborne wastes from the kitchen, the bathroom, and the laundry and, therefore, contains human wastes plus grease, soap, waste food particles, paper, and the great variety of other matter that go into the town’s sewers.
Sewage may carry the germs of a number of serious diseases. It is made up chiefly of organic matter, which decays. Industrial wastes consist of a great variety of acids, metals, oil, grease, chemicals, and organic matter. Some are extremely poisonous.
When sewage and industrial wastes are discharged into a stream, they may discolor the water and give it a foul odor. They may reduce the supply of oxygen in the water, killing fish and many valuable forms of aquatic life. Sludge banks may develop, blanketing stream beds, smothering fish, food and filling up channels and harbors, a badly polluted stream is unsightly, almost totally useless, and potentially dangerous.
Water Pollution
The kind of treatment needed for sewage depends on two things: the size of the stream into which the treated sewage will go, and the purpose for which that stream is to be used.
Primary treatment removes suspended solids by allowing them to settle to the bottom or rise to the top in large “sedimentation tanks” through which the sewage moves very slowly. Secondary treatment removes still more of the impurities by biological or chemical means. The kind of treatment needed for sewage depends on two things: the size of the stream into which the treated sewage will go, and the purpose for which that stream is to be used.
Water Pollution
Primary treatment removes suspended solids by allowing them to settle to the bottom or rise to the top in large “sedimentation tanks” through which the sewage moves very slowly.
Secondary treatment removes still more of the impurities by biological or chemical means. Industrial waste treatment varies with the type of manufacturing operation involved. Acid or alkaline wastes from metallurgical plants are neutralized and dissolved, or suspended metals are settled out with the aid of chemicals.
Textile wastes almost always require chemical aids to precipitation. Biological processes are used to treat milk plant wastes and some of the many other types of industrial wastes.
The aim of all these processes is the same: to preserve the quality of water by lessening the amount of pollution which enters the stream.
A river is a large stream of freshwater flowing by gravity from an upland source to a large lake or to the sea and fed not only by sources such as springs but also by tributary streams. In the case of large rivers, some of the tributary streams themselves may be rivers.
