lbj water quality blog post

  Every living organisms living in aquatic ecosystems need dissolved oxygen to survive. Dissolved oxygen is the product of photosynthesis and diffusion and that is the only way water gets oxygen in it. Turbidity has a major impact on dissolved oxygen. Turbidity is how clear the water is and how much sediment suspended in the water. When the water is too turbid like when an algae bloom happens that happen because of high amounts of nitrates. This blocks the sunlight and does allow plants to grow stop dissolved oxygen made from photosynthesis. The acidity in the water is called pH and aquatic organisms live in water with a pH from 5.5 to 9.5. The water neutralizes this acid and this is called alkalinity. E coli can damage a water stream when in high amounts making it not safe to swim.  Conductivity is waters ability to conduct water. This and rapid and extreme water temperature causes stress to aquatic organisms. These are all important terms of the health of a water source.

mountaintop removal blog

      Mountain top removal is ruining our mountain state. The effects of mountain top removal are ugly and permanent. The first step they do for MMR is deforestation in which all of the vegetation on the whole mountain so they can begin to blast the over burden up. It is then moved into nearby valleys and streams where they fill in with dirt and this pollutes our streams and their aquatic ecosystems with dissolved minerals and toxic sediments. The loose soil makes flooding a major risk because there is nothing to hold the water back. Then they blast deep into the ground to gather the coal from the coal seams by using a dragline. Blasting near a town or house will cause damage too home and cover everything around the mine with black nasty coal dust. If we keep letting coal companies remove our mountains then we will eventually have no mountains in the mountain state anymore.