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Daily Bread for 1.21.24: Water Quality on Mississippi River Improving

 Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 17. Sunrise is 7:18 and sunset 4:53 for 9h 35m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 84.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1960, Little Joe 1B, a Mercury spacecraft, lifts off from Wallops Island, Virginia with Miss Sam, a female rhesus monkey on board.


Some good news about — literally on and in — the Upper Mississippi: Hope Kirwan reports Water quality on Mississippi River ‘improving, with a ways to go’ (Report looks at contamination levels, other water quality measures over last three decades’).  Kirwan writes 

Water quality on the upper Mississippi River has largely improved over the last 30 years, but action is needed to address different contaminants than those seen in previous decades.

That’s the takeaway from a new water quality report by the Upper Mississippi River Basin Association, or UMRBA, which represents Wisconsin and four other states.

The same report was first completed in 1989, when the river was largely polluted around urban areas, according to UMRBA’s executive director Kirsten Wallace.

She said this year’s version highlights the impact from years of work to reduce contamination from wastewater treatment plants, agricultural land and other sources throughout the river basin.

“We’re seeing declining trends in total (sediment and algae), metals and particles that attach to the sediment like phosphorus,” Wallace said. “So that all has been good.”

But Wallace said the monitoring data, collected from sites along the river between 1989 and 2018, shows there are some pollutants that have increased in the last three decades.

Levels of nitrogen, a nutrient that often comes from runoff of farm fields and other lands, have increased in the section of the river along Wisconsin.

Emphasis added. 

See also Upper Mississippi River Basin Association’s 2023 How Clean is the River? Report and 2023 How Clean is the River? Executive Summary.

A community that expects beneficial development keeps harmful waste to a minimum, exports its waste to places where it cannot harm other humans or animals, and does not import others’ harmful waste into its borders.  Three times since FREE WHITEWATER began publishing officials in this city’s government have recklessly considered plans to bring others’ waste into this city. Each plan was, at last, sensibly abandoned when repeated studies showed the impracticality of the plan (while not addressing all of the obvious environmental risks to Whitewater’s residents). 

If there should one day be a fourth effort, then it will fare no better than the last three. 


Penguin selfie offers bird’s eye view:

It Shouldn’t

Anna Clark (author of The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy) asks Why should Wisconsin drain Lake Michigan for Foxconn?: The Great Lakes — five inland seas holding one-fifth of all the fresh water on Earth — are vast, but they are not limitless. So it is alarming that Wisconsin intends to send…

Waste Hauling Into Whitewater

Post 75 in a series. When Green Turns Brown is an examination of a small town’s digester-energy project, in which Whitewater, Wisconsin would import other cities’ waste, claiming that the result would be both profitable and green. A few years (and seventy-five posts) ago, I began consideration of a local proposal to haul waste into Whitewater.…

Update on Waukesha’s Water

Post 74 in a series. Three weeks ago, I wrote about Waukesha’s need for water from the Great Lakes, due significantly because some of that community’s wells had become contaminated with radium.  See, Waukesha’s Water.  A prosperous area thereby finds itself a supplicant for water supplies from the Great Lakes, because part of her own supply has become…

Door County

Post 73 in a series. The Wisconsin Center for Investigate Journalism has an ongoing series about the condition of Wisconsin’s water supply, with three main topics, one of which is entitled, Failure at the Faucet. I’ve mentioned the full series before. See, Water Watch Wisconsin. Reading that series – the work of many journalists over many months, is…

The Context of It All

Post 72 in a series. This series began over a year ago, after some officials first proposed a digester energy project over two and a half years ago.  It’s worth a quick summary of where that project now stands, and the context of writing about the project. I’d say that there have been, so far,…

Waukesha’s Water

Post 71 in a series. Waukesha is a large suburban city, of about seventy-thousand, in a prosperous suburban county, of about four-hundred thousand.  By ordinary estimation, the residents of the city and county should have no difficulties with basic utilities and infrastructure. And yet, Waukesha has a water supply problem: Waukesha does not have an…

The State of Phosphorus Now

Post 70 in a series. Phosphorus may be used as a fertilizer, but that use comes at a price.  A community, especially a farming community, that uses phosphorus for fertilizer faces the problem of what to do with that element when large quantities spread through the environment.   Lee Bergquist of the Journal Sentinel, in a story…

The View from 30,000 Feet

Post 67 in a series. For today, a simple question about waste importation into Whitewater: 301. If there had been no milk processing plant in Whitewater, would the city have constructed digester capacity as large as it now has, for importing waste into the city from other locations? That is, in cases like these, would…

Volume for Payback (Isn’t So Simple After All)

Post 66 in a series. When Green Turns Brown is an examination of a small town’s digester-energy project, in which Whitewater, Wisconsin would import other cities’ waste, claiming that the result would be both profitable and green. I posted yesterday about remarks from December on the supposed volume for payback of a waste-receiving station with today’s…

Volume for Payback

Post 65 in a series. When Green Turns Brown is an examination of a small town’s digester-energy project, in which Whitewater, Wisconsin would import other cities’ waste, claiming that the result would be both profitable and green. Today’s question begin is Number 298. All the questions in this series may be found in the Question Bin.…

Rockford, Illinois

Post 64 in a series. When Green Turns Brown is an examination of a small town’s digester-energy project, in which Whitewater, Wisconsin would import other cities’ waste, claiming that the result would be both profitable and green. Today’s questions begin with Number 296. All the questions in this series may be found in the Question Bin.…

September to December 2015

Post 63 in a series. When Green Turns Brown is an examination of a small town’s digester-energy project, in which Whitewater, Wisconsin would import other cities’ waste, claiming that the result would be both profitable and green. On 9.17.15, Whitewater’s City Manager, Cameron Clapper, gave brief remarks in support of waste hauling into Whitewater. See, Text of…

Hawking Fallacies at a Price of Over a Million

Post 62 in a series. When Green Turns Brown is an examination of a small town’s digester-energy project, in which Whitewater, Wisconsin would import other cities’ waste, claiming that the result would be both profitable and green. In the 12.15.15 meeting at which the Donhoue firm advocated note merely wastewater upgrades but waste importation into Whitewater,…