Pollution in the Chesapeake Bay

You and your buddy are just coming back from the most intense wiffle ball game of your 10 year old life.  Exhausted you use your allowance from earlier that week and stop by the local convenience store and buy the coldest, most refreshing Gatorade there.  After chugging it down, you realize that your house is still 10 minutes away by bike, and you have to pedal one handed to hold this empty bottle.  You get a ways down the road but soon the one handed pedaling becomes to hard, so you just toss the bottle into the street and continue your way home.  Eventually that bottle finds its way into a storm drain, which then proceeds to empty out right into the Chesapeake Bay.  The bottle resting among millions of other plastic non biodegradable items, waiting to ruin an animals habitat.

Photo Courtesy of  http://www.lizasreef.com/HOPE%20FOR%20THE%20OCEANS/bays_harbors_and_sounds.htm

The picture above is a representation of the devastating impact of pollution and its effect of the bay.  In the picture it shows where the numerous storm drains empty into the bay.  Notice the enormous amounts of garbage piled  up into one area and slowly spreading into the bay.  Without any cleaning of the bay the garbage could eventually spread into deeper parts of the bay, completely destroying important ecosystems.  Most people fail to realize how important the bay is to our everyday lives.  Not only does the bay provide a lot of business through shipping, fishing, crabbing, etc. but it also is very important to the land and rivers that feed into it.

Humans are responsible for most of the pollution that enters the bay, whether it is from factories, farms, or run offs from drains and rainfall.  The only way the bay can be saved is if everyone did their part and watched their pollution that fed into the bay.  Howard Ernst author of Save the Bay said that the bay right now at its current health is at 38% of the health it should be.  This eye opening statistic should be enough motivation to start saving the bay now.  It is estimated that at the rate the bay is undergoing population currently, in about 50 years the bay could get so bad there would be no saving it.  The source of the bay's problems are people, therefore people need to be the ones who fix it.  It starts with whoever is reading this page, should go out and make sure there are no bottles or any waste outside that could make its way into the bay.  The largest estuary in America should be clean and beautiful for future generations to cherish, and the clean up starts now with each one of us.