• Human and animal sewage (poop). Many of us live out in the wilds and we put in septic tanks to handle our refuse. But sometimes these systems fail and sewage gets in the nearby stream. The big cities aren't much better with our huge sewage treatment systems. Many are wearing out or haven't kept up with increasing populations. And when it rains, stormwater and sewage will often go into the nearby waters without being treated at all. If you go boating for up to three days after a rain and tip over in your boat, you could be exposed to all kinds of bacteria. Other problems: all the pharmaceuticals we take these days aren't removed by our sewage treatment systems.

• Urban sprawl and bad development practices. Whenever you put down more pavement and homes, you take away land that acts like a filter to rain when it comes. Ground with nothing on it sheds tons of dirt into our streams when it rains. This top soil is gone forever into our once-clear streams, creating ugly development sites and flooding and contaminated waterways.
  

• Our lawns and golf courses. Thousands of tons of fertilizers and pesticides are annually pumped and layered on our beautiful green lawns and golf courses, even our parks. This is unhealthy for our children and pets, even golf course employees and players, but that stuff also washes into our lakes and streams, these chemicals causing overgrowth of algae that clog up our waterways and harm fish.

• Our farms. What happens on our lawns, you can multiply when we look at farms. Those idyllic places of clean green often are miniature chemical plants because of all the fuel, pesticides and fertilizers farmers use to get higher yields. In many cases, farmers may also have much livestock, causing contamination because the manure to too much to apply to the fields, and thus much of it ends up in our streams.

• Litter and throw-away society. Walk along any stream, and you'll see an anthropological study of our culture today: drink containers, fast food wrappers, grocery carts, old tires, disposable diapers, car parts and lubricating oil that many still pour down their storm drains.

• Dumps and landfills. Although this could be considered a point source, what lands in landfills is usually from us, because we don't dispose of hazardous wastes properly, and the big waste management companies love to see us throw it away, especially if they get paid by the ton. (See my Waste Not post from a few weeks ago.)

• Dams. Huh, they look pretty clean to me! But don't let looks mislead you. Dams make being a fish very hard, especially if you are a salmon trying to swim upstream to spawn. Dams aren't lakes and they aren't rivers. They disrupt the free flow of water which harms the life that lives within it. Dams also cause extreme temperature variations in rivers below them, and the fluctuations of temperatures, sometimes from warm to extreme cold, also is harmful to fish, causing fluctuations of oxygen so necessary to various species of fish, especially those who require more dissolved oxygen than others.

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