Americans Using Less Water

  • We use about 410-billion gallons of water a day in the U.S. (Photo courtesy of the US EPA)

Even as the population grows, the
US is using less water. Lester
Graham has the numbers from a new
report on water use from the US
Geological Survey:

Transcript

Even as the population grows, the
US is using less water. Lester
Graham has the numbers from a new
report on water use from the US
Geological Survey:

We use about 410-billion gallons of water a day in the U.S. But, water use per person is down. And, total water use for the nation is down about 5% from 1980 to 2005, the latest year covered by the report.

Susan Hutson is one of the authors of the Geological Survey report. She says there are a lot of factors affecting water use.

“Water conservation education, a public policy that supports that water conservation, and inovative technology, primarily in irrigation and the generation of thermo-electric power, the use of water for the cooling.”

There are still some problems. Some agricultural areas are using water faster than aquifers can be replenished. And, as we build more power plants -the biggest users of water – it will mean more demand in the future.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

The Fish Are Floundering

  • An endangered holiday darter. Darters are among the most threatened Southeastern fish; they have been likened to aquatic canaries. (Photo by Noel Burkhead, courtesy of USGS)

A new study shows things are getting
worse for fish in North America. Lester
Graham reports water pollution is the problem:

Transcript

A new study shows things are getting
worse for fish in North America. Lester
Graham reports water pollution is the problem:

The U.S. Geological Survey finds nearly twice as many kinds of fish are now listed
as imperiled today than just 20 years ago. 61 types of fish have gone extinct.

Howard Jelks is the lead author of the study.

He says the decline in fish is because most streams, rivers, and lakes are in worse
shape because of sprawling development, farmers’ chemicals, and pollution washed
off parking lots and streets.

Even if you don’t go fishing, or really even care about the fish, Jelks says there’s a
reason you should care.

“You know, at a certain point, it’s a quality of life issue. If it’s not good enough for
some of these fish, it’s probably not good enough for your kids to swim in.”

And the experts say that means we all have to think about what’s going down the
drain and what chemicals we’re putting on lawns, and on farms.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham

Related Links

New Concerns Over Wastewater Sludge

  • Triclosan is an active ingredient in many products claiming antibacterial properties. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)

After sewage is cleaned at a wastewater treatment plant, sludge is left behind. This
sludge is often used on farms as fertilizer. But the wastewater treatment doesn’t get
rid of all the drugs and chemicals we flush down the drain. Kinna Ohman reports
researchers are finding some of these chemicals are affecting wildlife and could be
getting into our food:

Transcript

After sewage is cleaned at a wastewater treatment plant, sludge is left behind. This
sludge is often used on farms as fertilizer. But the wastewater treatment doesn’t get
rid of all the drugs and chemicals we flush down the drain. Kinna Ohman reports
researchers are finding some of these chemicals are affecting wildlife and could be
getting into our food:


Take a tour of any wastewater treatment plant and you’ll soon understand the main
objective: to separate the liquids from the solids. Until the mid 90s, most of these solids,
or sludge, used to go into landfills or were dumped in the ocean. But in 1994 the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency started a program to promote the use of sludge on farm
fields as fertilizer. The EPA thought this was the perfect solution… turning waste into a
useful product.


But scientists have found something which could turn the EPA program on its head.
Rolf Halden is an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Water
and Health. He says sludge contains most of the chemicals we use:


“If you look at municipal sludge, it really is a matrix that reflects the chemical footprint
of our society.”


Halden’s focused on one chemical he’s found in sludge called Triclosan – and
there’s a lot of it out there. It’s in antibacterial soaps, and can even be in our toothpastes,
deodorants, and shampoos. Until recently, most if it was thought to break down. Now,
Halden says they found something different:


“In the work that we have done at Johns Hopkins, we have demonstrated for example that
Triclosan when it enters a wastewater treatment plant is not effectively being degraded
and half of the mass is left over.”


Halden and his colleagues found this leftover mass in sludge. And since half the sludge
produced each year in the US goes to fertilize farm fields, Halden says we might want to
think about our food supply:


“We really create a pipeline of contaminants that are first discharged into the water and
then accumulated in sludge and then applied in agriculture which opens a pathway for the
contamination of the food supply and the further distribution of these chemicals in the
environment.”


At this point, scientists are still studying levels of this chemical. They haven’t even
begun to understand Triclosan’s effects in agriculture. But there’s something they do
know about it.


Researchers found Triclosan can mimic a thyroid hormone in the North American
bullfrog and disrupt its growth. When its tadpoles were exposed to low levels of
this chemical for a short amount of time, their growth into a juvenile frog was impaired.


But this doesn’t sound like that big of a deal… the frog doesn’t die, it just doesn’t grow
properly, right? Keep in mind that this study tracked exposure to Triclosan over four
hours. Halden says by spreading wastewater sludge in agriculture, we could be exposing
wildlife to chemicals like Triclosan for their entire lives.


“When these chemicals are transported into the environment with the agricultural
fertilizer, which is the municipal sludge, then they sit there for in the soil, not only for
seconds but for days and weeks and for months and to even years and in some situations
in sediments, in aquatic sediments, they can sit there for decades and this implies that
organisms are, for their lifespan, exposed to very high levels of these contaminants.
What the outcome of that is really not fully understood right now and requires more research.”


The U.S. Geological Survey has also been looking for chemicals in sludge – or biosolids –
and they’ve found steroids, antihistamines, and antidepressants. Ed Furlong, a research chemist
with the USGS in Denver, Colorado, says they are now studying how these chemicals react in agricultural
fields:


“We’ve identified that many of the compounds are consistently present in biosolids from
across the country. We’re now trying to understand what happens after those biosolids
are applied to the soil.”


The USGS is not the only agency looking at this issue. The Environmental Protection Agency has been conducting its own survey of chemicals like Triclosan in sludge. They say the results of the survey won’t be released until next
summer. Then comes the complicated process of deciding what to do with the survey
results. A decision about whether to stop using sludge with hormone disrupting
chemicals to fertilize farm fields could be years away.


For the Environment Report, I’m Kinna Ohman.

Related Links

Ten Threats: Saving an Ancient Fish

  • A juvenile lake sturgeon. (Photo courtesy of USFS, Rob Elliott)

Biologists have been concerned about a number of native species that
have been disappearing. One of them is the largest fish in the Great
Lakes. Over-fishing and gravel mining in riverbeds have wiped out 99-
percent of the population of lake sturgeon. Sturgeon used to be common
throughout the Great Lakes, but they’re a rare sight these days. Celeste
Headlee reports… biologists are trying to save some of the sturgeon’s
spawning grounds:

Transcript

We’ve been bringing you reports from the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s series ‘Ten Threats to the Great Lakes.’ Lester Graham is
our guide through the series. He says our next report is about an ancient
fish that’s been disappearing.


Biologists have been concerned about a number of native species that
have been disappearing. One of them is the largest fish in the Great
Lakes. Over-fishing and gravel mining in riverbeds have wiped out 99-
percent of the population of lake sturgeon. Sturgeon used to be common
throughout the Great Lakes, but they’re a rare sight these days. Celeste
Headlee reports… biologists are trying to save some of the sturgeon’s
spawning grounds:


(Sound of the lake)


Sturgeon are the largest fish in the Great Lakes. The grayish brown
creatures can grow up to seven feet long, and weigh more than 200
pounds. Sturgeon have been on Earth for 100 million years, and they’ve
remained essentially unchanged in all that time. Instead of scales, the
fish have an almost leathery skin with five rows of bony plates running
along their torpedo-shaped bodies.


Fish biologist Bruce Manny says sturgeon were once abundant in the
Great Lakes. Back in 1880, in one month’s time, fishermen pulled four
thousand of them from the Detroit River.


“They tore holes in their nets when they were fishing for other fish that
they cared about. So, when they found a sturgeon in their nets, they
would kill them, bring them to the shore, pile them up on shore, dry them
out and use them for fuel in the steamships. Burn them up.”


Most of the time, the creatures were caught and killed while fisherman
angled for more valuable fish. Scientists think over fishing has caused
sturgeon populations in all of the Great Lakes to dwindle to less than one
percent of their former number.


The state of Michigan closed the Detroit River to sturgeon-fishing years
ago. Bruce Manny says he decided to check on the sturgeon and see if
the fish population had started to recover.


Manny assembled a team of biologists from the U.S. Geological Survey.
He says he was surprised when his team caught only 86 fish over the
course of four years. Manny says he realized the sturgeon were in
serious trouble.


USGS scientists followed the tagged fish for two years, and their
patience was eventually rewarded. Manny found the first known
spawning site ever documented in Detroit River in modern times.


“We were excited all right. Eureka moment. I mean this is like a very,
very great coincidence that we were able to find these spawning ready
males, and they were able to find a female. When there are only 86 fish
caught in four years out here, there aren’t that many around. So, to find
someone to spawn with is a real challenge, I would say.”


The area where the sturgeon mated lies close to a sewer discharge pipe.
There are limp, brown grasses bordering grey, mucky water. Manny sent
divers down and discovered the fish had actually produced fertilized
eggs. Manny says this was a major step forward for his project.


Sturgeon are pretty picky about their nesting sites. They need a fast
moving current and several layers of rock where eggs rest safely. The
problem is a lot of the gravel has been mined out of the Detroit River for
use in construction.


Another problem is the sturgeons’ long life. Fish biologist Ron Bruch is
in Wisconsin. He oversees sturgeon populations in Wisconsin’s
Winnebago river system. He says female sturgeons live more than 100
years and they don’t spawn until they are at least 20 years old.


“Their life history works well for a long-lived species, but it doesn’t
work well for a species that’s exploited heavily. So, sturgeon can only
tolerate very low exploitation rates, and when that exploitation is high
the populations collapse.”


Wisconsin was the first state in the U.S. to create a sturgeon management
program more than 100 years ago, and the fish are more abundant there.


Biologists in Michigan monitored the nesting sites in the Detroit River
this spring. Eight species of fish used the beds, including popular sport
fish like yellow perch and walleye. Only two sturgeon came by the sites,
but they weren’t ready to spawn.


Ron Bruch says biologists will have to create a lot more spawning sites
like the ones in the Detroit River before the sturgeon population is firmly
reestablished in the Great Lakes.


“In and of itself, it’s not going to restore all of Lake Erie or all the Great
Lakes, but it’s a shining example of what can be done in many areas
around the Great Lakes to help produce Lake Sturgeon spawning habitat
and rehabilitate the Lake Sturgeon population.”


USGS biologists will go back to the nesting sites next spring. They say it may
take years for sturgeon to notice the small beds in the 32-mile river.


One important development, though, is a change of policy from the
Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. Canadians used to allow
fisherman to take one sturgeon a day out of the river. Now, it’s illegal to
possess one of the endangered fish on both sides of the channel.


For the GLRC, I’m Celeste Headlee.

Related Links

Alewife Die-Off Sparks Worries for Salmon

  • Because alewives make up a large portion of salmon diets, alewife die-offs are causing concerns that salmon populations might also decline. (Photo courtesy of the Fish and Wildlife Service)

A small fish is dying off in parts of the Great Lakes. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the amount of alewives in Lake Michigan dropped nearly 70 percent last year. And biologists say the decrease might signal trouble for the salmon fishery. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:

Transcript

A small fish is dying off in parts of the Great Lakes. According to the U-S
Geological Survey, the amount of alewives in Lake Michigan dropped nearly 70
percent last year. And biologists say the decrease might signal trouble for
the salmon fishery. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette
Reports:


Lake Michigan’s alewife population has been lower than it is now a few times
in the last 20 years. But Lake Huron’s alewife population is practically zero.


That’s why salmon in Huron are small and many are coming over to Lake
Michigan to feed.


USGS Biologist Charles Madenjian says the problem is stocked salmon are now
reproducing naturally.


And the growing numbers of salmon are eating up all the alewives.


“People fear that if alewives stay at this low level, the salmon are more
prone to disease and you’ll get a die-off.”


Neither salmon nor alewives are native to the Great Lakes.


Alewives swam in from the Atlantic Ocean through the Welland Canal. Salmon were introduced in part to control the alewife population.


For the GLRC, I’m Peter Payette in Traverse City.

Related Links

Dilemmas for Wastewater Treatment Plants

  • Water contamination from sources that might include some wastewater treatment plants closes some beaches. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Municipal sewer plants are sometimes blamed for high E. coli bacteria counts that close beaches to swimmers. Some cities are working to find better ways to treat the water and put it back into nature. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:

Transcript

Municipal sewer plants are sometimes blamed for high E. coli bacteria counts
that close beaches to swimmers. Some cities are working to find better ways to treat the
water and put it back into nature. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus
reports:


(sound of cars moving along a small street and a few people talking)


A typical summer day by the lake: SUVs pull boats on trailers. People saunter from an
ice cream shop to the city beach. Jet skis and water skiiers slice through the waves.
Carpenters raise trusses on homes being built into the remaining lakefront lots.


Just a few years ago it seemed towns like this were just for loggers and locals. But now
people are flocking to the lakes around the Midwest and staying there. And that’s putting
a strain on local sewer plants.


(sound of machines inside the water treatment plant)


For 40 years, the treated waste water from the Boyne City, Michigan sewer plant has
been released into the big lake it was built on…Lake Charlevoix.


“It’s located right adjacent to a public swimming beach, park, marina and some valuable
waterfront property. We are only a block off the downtown district.”


Plant manager Dan Meads wants to stop mixing the end product with the water where
tourists and the locals swim and play. He tests daily for E. coli bacteria. He
doesn’t want anyone getting sick. But it’s still a concern, and there are other concerns.


In recent years, the United States Geological Survey has reported on new kinds of
contaminants that they’ve found in ground and surface water. The USGS says treated
wastewater from sewer plants can contain hormones from birth control pills, antibiotics,
detergents, fire retardants, and pesticides.


USGS microbiologist Sheridan Haack says the effects of all these compounds are still
unknown. Most are found in tiny quantities, but combined they could cause any number
of chemical reactions.


“There are many different chemical structures and it would be very difficult to state for
all of them what we would actually expect the environmental fate to be and how they
would actually be transported through the environment.”


Haack says the medicines people take don’t disappear. They eventually leave the body
and are flushed down the toilet. Those drugs have been tested for safe human
consumption, but the question is: what happens when those chemicals are mixed in with
industrial waste, accidental spills and nature’s own chemical processes? Haack says they
just might come back around to hurt humans, fish and wildlife.


The Boyne City solution is to build a new wastewater treatment plant two miles from the
beaches up the Boyne River. Officials say contaminants will be diluted by the time they
flow back down into Lake Charlevoix.


(sound of the Boyne River)


Larry Maltby volunteers for a group called “Friends of the Boyne River.” The group
doesn’t like the city’s plan to discharge treated wastewater directly into the river. It wants
them to consider some non-traditional methods. They say the new sewer plant could run
a pipe under a golf course or spray the treated water on farm fields… or let it drain into
wetlands to let nature filter it out.


“It will seep into the soils which are very sandy and gravelly underneath the golf course
and then the filtration through the ground will have a great deal of effect of continuing to
purify that water. Much more so than it would be with a direct deposit, straight into the
surface waters of Michigan.”


Lawyers for the Friends of the Boyne River have appealed to the state dept of
environmental quality and filed a lawsuit.


But wastewater treatment plant manager Dan Meads says the city doesn’t want to please
just one group and end up angering another…


“There isn’t any guarantee that you can satisfy everybody. We think we have the best
option available.”


As municipalities are short on funds and personnel, they don’t want to wait for decades
for the perfect solution. Still, nobody wants any amount of pollution to affect their home
or their recreational area.


Sheridan Haack with the USGS won’t take either side in this dispute. She says not only
are the dangers from contaminants unknown, the best way to deal with them is unknown.


“I am not aware of any consensus in the scientific community on the nature or types of
treatment for this broad range of chemicals.”


In the meantime… communities such as Boyne City have the unenviable task of trying to
dispose of their residents sewage without polluting the beaches, the fishing, and the
environment that brought folks there in the first place.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chris McCarus.

Related Links

Report on Water Use Patterns Incomplete?

A new report by the U.S. Geological Survey says per capita, Americans are using less water now than they were 15 years ago. Researchers say that’s a sign that conservation is working. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports, environmental groups say the report paints an incomplete picture:

Transcript

A new report by the U.S. Geological Survey says per capita, Americans are using less water now
than they were 15 years ago. Researchers say that’s a sign that conservation is working. But as
the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports, environmental groups say the report
paints an incomplete picture:


According to the report, technological advances in irrigation and power generation are allowing
people to do more with less water. And the report says household water use is keeping pace with
population growth.


Reg Gilbert is with Great Lakes United. He says there’s not enough information in the report.
Gilbert says he’d like to see how water use is impacting ground and surface water supplies.


“It’s just basically not enough, because the USGS isn’t really given the charge to get the
information that’s needed, and certainly isn’t given the money to put out the kind of report that
would be fully useful.”


Gilbert also says this is the first USGS report that does not break out water use data for the Great
Lakes region. The report’s author says Great Lakes data wasn’t compiled because there wasn’t
enough money to do it.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sarah Hulett.

Related Links

Suburbs Draining Water From Lake Michigan

A new report says metropolitan Milwaukee is pumping so much groundwater, it’s pulling water out of the Great Lakes basin. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports:

Transcript

A new report says metropolitan Milwaukee is pumping so much groundwater, it’s
pulling water out of the Great Lakes basin. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Sarah Hulett reports:


Just west of Milwaukee runs a line that divides the Great Lakes basin from
the Mississippi River basin. Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey say
the fast growing-communities that sit along that line are pumping enough
groundwater that it’s actually reversed the underground flow that used to go
into Lake Michigan. Instead, that water is coming out of the lake.


Noah Hall is with the National Wildlife Federation.


“What’s most shocking and disturbing about this, though, is that this
groundwater pumping that’s been going on is having the effect of draining
Lake Michigan of ten million gallons a day, and diverting that water out of
the Great Lakes basin, never to return.”


Hall says that water is going into the Mississippi River basin. He says the
USGS report illustrates the need for Great Lakes governors to regulate
groundwater – not just surface water.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sarah Hulett.

Related Links

Biologists Help Prehistoric Fish Make a Comeback

  • Sturgeon like this adult used to be common in the Great Lakes. Today biologists are trying to restore populations of the ancient fish. (Photo courtesy of the USFWS)

Biologists with the U.S. Geological Survey are trying to bring Lake Sturgeon back to the Detroit River. The giant fish once spawned in the riverbed every spring before moving on to Lake Erie… now, the sturgeon are rapidly disappearing. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:

Transcript

Biologists with the U.S. Geological Survey are trying to bring Lake Sturgeon
back to the Detroit River. The giant fish once spawned in the riverbed every spring before
moving on to Lake Erie. Now, the sturgeon are rapidly disappearing. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:


Sturgeon are the largest fish in the Great Lakes. The grayish brown creatures can grow up to
seven feet long, and weigh more than 200 pounds. Sturgeon have been on Earth for 100 million
years – 40 million years before the dinosaurs – and they have remained essentially
unchanged in all that time. Instead of scales, the fish have an almost leathery skin and five rows
of bony plates running along their torpedo-shaped bodies.


Fish biologist Bruce Manny says sturgeon were once abundant in the Great Lakes. Back in 1880,
in one month’s time, fishermen pulled four thousand of them from the Detroit River.


“They tore holes in their nets when they were fishing for other fish that they cared about. So
when they found a sturgeon in their nets, they would kill them, bring them to the shore, pile them
up on shore, dry them out and use them for fuel in the steamships. Burn them up.”


People didn’t eat a lot of sturgeon, but the creatures were caught and killed while fisherman
angled for more valuable fish. Scientists estimate that over-fishing has caused sturgeon
populations in all of the Great Lakes to dwindle to less than one percent of their
former number. The state of Michigan closed the Detroit River to all sturgeon fishing years ago.
Bruce Manny says he decided to check on the sturgeon and see if the fish population had started
to recover.


Manny assembled a team of biologists from the U.S. Geological Survey. They started trapping
and then tracking sturgeon with electronic transmitters. Manny says he was surprised when his
team caught only 86 fish over course of four years. Manny says he realized the sturgeon
were in serious trouble and he obtained grants to investigate further. USGS scientists followed
the tagged fish for two years, and their patience was eventually rewarded. Manny found the first
known spawning site ever documented in Detroit River in modern times.


“We were excited all right. Eureka moment. I mean, this is like a very, very great coincidence
that we were able to find these spawning ready males, and they were able to find a female. When
there are only 86 fish caught in four years out here, there aren’t that many around. So to find
somebody to spawn with, so to speak, is a real challenge, I would say.”


The area where the sturgeon mated lies close to a sewer discharge pipe. There are limp, brown
grasses bordering grey, mucky water. Manny sent divers down and discovered the fish had
actually produced fertilized eggs. Manny says this was a major step forward for his project.


Sturgeon are pretty picky about their nesting sites. They need a fast moving current and several
layers of rock where the eggs rest safely. The problem is a lot of the gravel has been mined out of
the Detroit River for use in construction.


Another problem is the sturgeons’ longevity. Fish biologist Ron Bruch is in Wisconsin. He
oversees sturgeon populations in Wisconsin’s Winnebago River system. He says female
sturgeons live more than 100 years and they don’t spawn until they are at least 20 years old.


“Their life history works well for a long-lived species, but it doesn’t work well for a species that’s
exploited heavily. So, sturgeon can only tolerate very low exploitation rates, and when the
exploitation is high the populations collapse.”


Wisconsin was the first state in the U.S. to create a sturgeon management program, more than
100 years ago, and the fish are abundant there.


Bruch says that’s why many other states have come to him for advice on how to strengthen their
sturgeon populations. He helped build the first man-made Lake Sturgeon spawning site and he
thinks a program started in Michigan has a good chance to succeed.


Bruce Manny plans to build three sites, using limestone, coal cinders and gravel. He’ll monitor
them closely to determine which kind of rock the fish prefer. Manny says he doesn’t mind
spending so much time with sturgeon. He says he admires the fish, and imagines that
each of them has a distinct personality.


“I wish they could talk to me and they do in some ways, because some of them have scars and
evidence of propeller hits which show that they’ve managed to take that sort of punishment and
survive it spite of it all. You know, they’re long-lived, they’re survivors, they’re
tough, and they’re successful.”


Ron Bruch it’ll be 100 years before fisherman will reel in these huge fish. He says many
generations of biologists will have come and gone before the sturgeon population is firmly
reestablished in the Great Lakes. And biologists, he says, will have to create a lot more
spawning sites like the ones in the Detroit River.


“In and of itself, it’s not going to restore all of Lake Erie or all the Great Lakes, but it’s a shining
example of what can be done in many areas around the Great Lakes to help produce Lake
Sturgeon spawning habitat and rehabilitate the Lake Sturgeon population.”


It’ll cost about half a million dollars to build the three fish nesting sites. Officials say they’ll be
ready in time for the sturgeon’s spawning season next May. If the project is successful in the
Detroit River, biologists hope to expand the program into other areas of the Great Lakes where
sturgeon were once abundant.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Celeste Headlee.

Related Links

Erosion in the Gulf Blamed on Midwest

Scientists say part of the problem with erosion along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico begins in the Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tom Weber reports:

Transcript

Scientists say part of the problem with erosion along the coast of the
Gulf
of Mexico begins in the Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Tom Weber reports:


In a recent report… the U.S. Geological Survey says Louisiana’s
coastline
is disappearing faster than first thought. By the year 2050… one-third
of the state’s current coastline could be gone.


Restoration depends a lot on sediments. As they flow south… they’re
diverted to build new land along the coast. But the USGS’ Jimmy
Johnston
says the locks and dams along the Missouri… upper Mississippi… and
Ohio
Rivers trap much of that sediment…


“They have had numbers as high as 67% of the sediments that come
down the
river are being diverted or meeting these locks and dams. If you have
less
sediments there’ll be less sediments to build land.”


Johnston adds more study is needed to know just how much locks and
dams in
the Midwest affect Louisiana’s coast. For the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium, I’m Tom Weber.