Water Pollution 2 Essay Research Paper Our

Water Pollution 2 Essay, Research Paper

Our oceans cover approximately 75% of the planet Earth. A distinct percent of our food

resources come from these waters including fish and plants. The air around us is what keeps the

flame of life from fading and flickering out. Why would anyone pollute these precious parts of

our ecosystem? Well they are, and pollution laws should be strengthened and vigorously

enforced no matter what the cost.

China, a country with an extensive coast line, should work harder to protect its marine

environment. According to the theme of the international Year of the Ocean, 1998, oceans are

the common inheritance of all people, it is therefore our responsibility to protect the oceans for

future generations. So then why is there a large-scale discharge of waste containing nutrients

with nitrogen and phosphorus contributing to the killing of 300 tons of fish (China

environment Daily). The paper said that a total of 2.9 billion tons of sewage were discharged

into the waters at South China s Pearl River mouth in 1997, with a rate treatment of less than

10%. This large amount of discharge of harmful land-sourced substances into the seas has

posed a major threat to the marine environment. The current law, which merely restricts the

concentration of pollutants, is not effective enough to guarantee a high quality of seawater.

This is an effect of the legislation lacking articles concerning the quantity of the discharged

wastes. The disastrous red tide which hit the coastal waters of China s Guangdong Province

and Hong Kong between March and April of 1998, is a direct result of this lackingness.

In August of 1982, China adopted the Law on Marine Environment Protection, which

went into effect March of 83. Regulations such as: Regulations Concerning the Prevention

Damage to the Marine Environment by Coastal Construction Projects (1990), Regulations

Concerning the Prevention of Pollution Damage to the Marine Environment by Land-based

Pollutants (1990) and Regulations Concerning the Dumping of Wastes at Sea (1985) were all

enacted and all have prevented serious damage to seawater during the past 15 years. But who is

to say what is considered serious, these pollutants could have killed off species of marine life

yet to be discovered by man. What if some now extinct type of marine plant held the cure to

AIDS or cancer, mankind will never know because we are too busy dumping our wastes into

these environments disrupting the ecosystems.

But land-based pollutants are not the only destructers of man that disturb the ecological

balance of the sea. Uncontrolled, profit driven sand and gravel dredging and excavation have

damaged mangroves and coral reefs, causing equally harmful effects to the marine ecology as

does pollution from waste water. The fish breeding sites in tidal areas and major migration

routes are sometimes destroyed by the irrational construction of dams and the uncontrolled

reclaiming of land from the sea for building development zones. Much of the waters bordering

China are also in contact with Japan, and Japan has a large fishing economy which is now going

to be affected by the vast amounts of fishes either dying off of moving to cleaner waters. An

institutional reform is to be under way, but government function have not been clearly defined

and the overlapping of different institutions responsibilities still prevents the effective

implementation of the law. According to Liu Nanlai, a senior research fellow of the Law

Institute from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, to prevent troubles from arising

during the operation of the law, a single governmental institution to support the unified

management of State marine protection affairs is desperately needed . But while everyone is

running around trying to get all the legal affairs settled, manufacturers and businesses are still

dumping excessive wastes into our oceans. And I say our oceans because the waters China is

dumping in is connected to the waters that border every other coastline country and eventually

currents will carry all the wastes around the entire globe. (Zheng Ying)

Somewhat more local is the damage being done to the Gulf of Mexico fishing industry.

Detected off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas, the largest ever gulf dead zone which is said

to be so wide, it would stretch from Chicago to Des Moines, said Nancy Rabalais of the

Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, which measured the zone in July of 1999. More

than half the nitrogen blamed for the problem comes from crop fertilizers, which cause low

oxygen levels in an area of water and then becomes vacant of shrimp and other sea life from

spring to early fall.

Farms cover vast chunks of the Mississippi River basin, which spreads across 41% of

the United States. The farmers in that area are losing $400 million a year by letting fertilizer

wash down the Mississippi River into the gulf, where it goes to wast

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