According to two reports released this month by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), it is common to find glyphosate, better known as Roundup, in rain and rivers in the Mississippi River watershed.
“Though glyphosate is the mostly widely used herbicide in the world, we know very little about its long term effects to the environment,” says Paul Capel, USGS chemist and an author on this study. “This study is one of the first to document the consistent occurrence of this chemical in streams, rain and air throughout the growing season. This is crucial information for understanding where management efforts for this chemical would best be focused.”
While communities that depend on the Mississippi River for drinking water treat and purify the water for human uses, nothing is done for the fish and wildlife that also depend on the River. The costs of cleaning up excessively polluted water are usually incurred by local communities and taxpayers.
Pesticides and fertilizers are commonly used by large-scale farms but that’s no reason they should end up in the Mississippi River. Conservation programs in the Farm Bill pay farmers to do things like set up native barriers to streams that line their farms, preventing overflow into waterways.