Environmental Factors Affecting Water Quality Of UHS Creek

The water quality of the UHS creek that was determined was excellent. While the water in the UHS creek was excellent, not all water sources are. Many factors affect the water quality of a water source, but one of the most important effect is the way humans negatively impact water quality. One way is the runoff process. Farmers use pesticides and fertilizers to help their crops grow better, but these chemicals are often swept into bodies of water because of runoff. Runoff is when it rains some of that water goes into the soil to and most of the water gets pulled by gravity into streams, lakes, creeks, and etc. Not only does the water run into the water sources, but the soil is pulled as well, and that soil is filled with the pesticides and fertilizers that the farmers put into the soil. When the chemicals are pulled into the water the concentration of nitrate and phosphate may increase incredibly. (http://www.lenntech.com/rivers-pollution-quality.htm) Another way that humans affect water quality is not following the restrictions that have been set in place. Some are when people litter, they mow in a no mow zone, or people dump chemicals in places that are not supposed to be dumped in, or they use harmful chemicals that are illegal to use.
There are various ways that could be used to restore a creek back to a healthy state. …show more content…
One technological solution is using instream restoration devices. These are devices that are put into the creek to clean out pollutants and harmful chemicals in the water. A positive of this solution is that this treatment is immediate. A second pro to this solution is that it removes harmful fine sediments. (http://streamside.us/our-services/instream-restoration-services/) Some negatives to this solution is that it is more expensive than natural solutions, and since it is a machine people will have to do maintanince on it, or the machine could