What is the effect of agricultural runoff on water pollution?

Voiceover

Presenter(s)

Abdullah Jarso

Abstract or Description

In Colorado there are a lot of rivers, but these rivers are sometimes contaminated by the fertilizers that agricultural lands use for their crops. When farmers add fertilizer to their crops right before a storm the “runoff does not get treated in water-treatment plants, instead running untreated into rivers and streams. Water pollution occurs when harmful substances—often chemicals or microorganisms—contaminate a stream, river, lake, ocean, aquifer, or other body of water, degrading water quality and rendering it toxic to humans or the environment”. If farmers check the weather and add the fertilizer a long time before the storm, the crops will have time to absorb the nutrients in the fertilizer so that less of it will become runoff.