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2013-09-29 19:27:05 (UTC)

The Little Miami River and Pollution

The Little Miami River is a very popular river in the area for recreational purposes. Regular canoeing, fishing and swimming along with many parks along the banks.

Every year there are local organized cleanup projects on the river where people canoe the river while collecting garbage from the banks of the river as part of ongoing restoration projects geared towards cleaning up the river.

The polluting of water comes from the large amount of agriculture around the river and the various tributaries the feed the river, the dumping of treated water from waste facilities into the river, urban development along the river way and sediment build up.

Water quality monitoring in 2007 identified impairments of aquatic life and recreational uses. The Little Miami River itself displayed exceptional quality, while the tributaries were generally of a lower quality. Overall, aquatic communities met water quality goals at 66% of the sites surveyed, partially met standards at about 26%; approximately 9% of the sites did not meet any of the quality goals. About 30% of the sites failed to meet bacteria water quality standards.

The two primary causes of aquatic life impairment are the high proportion of fine sediment in the channel and the extremely low water levels due to a drought year. Other stressors include degraded habitat from agricultural drainage and the "armoring" of the stream channel in urban areas; nutrient enrichment from wastewater plant effluent and cropland runoff, and oxygen demanding substances from inadequately treated storm water at the former ABX Airpark and combined sewer discharges within the Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD). Sources of bacteria are wastewater emanating from sanitary sewer and combined sewer overflows, inadequate treatment from home septic systems, and runoff of bacteria-laden crop fields where manure or sludge are likely applied.

The monitoring will not be done again until 2022.
(http://epa.ohio.gov/dsw/tmdl/LittleMiamiRiver.aspx)




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