Word: silts
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...breached sewage plants, microbes have penetrated the nearly 800 miles of piping that keeps the Des Moines area's 250,000 residents supplied with drinking water; it & will take a month to disinfect the system. Tetanus is another concern, especially for sandbaggers and rescuers slogging through the slimy silt and sewage-invested waters. And then there is encephalitis, a viral disease that inflames the spinal cord and brain and can produce a combination of low-grade fever, seizures and even coma. It is transmitted by mosquitoes, whose numbers are expected to explode along the saturated bottomlands in the coming weeks...
Less predictable, however, are the effects of the farm pesticides and industrial chemicals churning in the silt-encrusted swamps and ponds marooned by subsiding rivers. While hydrologists anticipate that the sheer volume of water will dilute and neutralize any toxicity, no one knows what dangers, if any, are posed by toxic runoff from hundreds of submerged factories, fuel- storage facilities and waste dumps. "Think of all this stuff making a witches' brew of new compounds," says Kevin Coyle, president of American Rivers, an environmental group in Washington. "We have no precedent...
...study, conducted by engineer David Erekson, recommends that the city cease the dumping as soon as possible. More than two tons of sludge, composed mostly of organic silt and alum, a coagulant used to separate waste, are dumped each...
Restorationists make use of the annual floods that stimulate the growth of riverine forests, flush out wetlands and rejuvenate them with fertile silt. Deprived of high-water surges, wetlands quickly die. In the 1960s, for example, flood-control canals transformed South Florida's wild Kissimmee River from a sinuous network of oxbows and tributaries into a stagnant ditch. The disastrous result: nearly 18,200 hectares (45,000 acres) of prime wetlands disappeared. Waterfowl and fish populations plummeted. Last year, in a startling about-face, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District proposed to unleash...
...while the West has bloomed on the river's bounty, exploding populations and a prolonged drought have had an ominous effect on the Colorado itself. The river that used to surge into the Gulf of California, depositing ruddy-colored silt that fanned out into a broad delta of new land at its mouth, hardly ever makes it to the sea anymore. The once mighty Colorado fizzles into a trickle, its last traces evaporating in the heat of the Mexican desert...