Freshwater Society

Otto Doering

Nitrogen. It makes up three-fourths of the air all around us. It cascades through our environment between land, water and the atmosphere. It is critical to agricultural production that feeds the world. And it is a byproduct of all the fossil fuels we consume.

In the United States, we put five times more nitrogen into the environment than is deposited or released naturally. That excess nitrogen causes a variety of environmental and health problems – pollution of ground and surface waters, smog, increased emissions of greenhouse gases.

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G. Tracy Mehan III, a former top water-quality official in the Environmental Protection Agency, and a panel of Minnesota water experts spoke Monday, June 25, on the accomplishments of the federal Clean Water Act, its limitations and prospects for resolving today’s biggest water pollution problems.

Mehan’s conclusion? The Clean Water Act, passed by Congress 40 years ago this fall, has done great things to clean up rampant pollution from sewage treatment plants and industries, but it was never intended to address the multiple-source pollution that is our biggest problem today. But there are other means by which citizens and policy-makers can work together to protect and clean up water.

The lecture and panel were sponsored by the Freshwater Society and the University of Minnesota College of Biological Sciences.

If you missed the event, it is available on archived video.

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