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Essay about A Plan for Reducing Water Pollution

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"Treat the Earth well. It was not given to you by your parents. It was loaned to you by your children." Kenyan proverb.

Solutions are like people, each one is complex as well as different. Most every part time environmentalist can have a solution to any environmental problem that ails this planet. That is not to say that they are always right. Conversely, they are not always wrong either. Having the solution is the first part, making the solution a reality is the second. Water pollution is a problem that most everyone would agree does exist. The toxic substances in the water can kill the plant life, animal life, and in some cases, the human life. In Teluk Mengkuang, Sijangkang, 156 ponds filled with tiger prawns died …show more content…

That is three times the legal limit of 0.10 in the state of Alaska (Dorfman 1). Since water pollution was not even a concern till about 20 years ago, we are paying for mistakes of the past as well. For years the oil refinery business went unregulated and companies dumped their products where they chose. This problem has built up into waste dumps that no one knows what to do with (Schou 2). Papua New Guinea was the victim of a California firm promising hopes “to build a $38 million detoxification plant to process 600,000 metric tons of toxic waste a month” (Lewis and Chepesiuk 2). This was a scam because the majority of the waste was shipped before the plant was built with promises that it would be built in the near future. Also, over half the chemicals could never be recycled and would be harmful to the oceans.

Now we have established what the harms and causes are for water pollution, we move on to the question of why they are not being cleaned up? That is easily answered in one word: money. It is estimated to cost between 20 to 30 million dollars to clean up a minor waste spill into the ocean. (AED 1) Another situation that arises is that the companies and individuals responsible for this refuse to pay for the clean up. They would rather fight the issue in court or litigation spending 40 to 80 percent of the total cost of the site clean up in court fees, transaction

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