¶ … clarion call for the people and leaders of El Paso to better focus (or at least start focusing) on the subject of soil erosion, water runoff and sedimentary issues relating the land and material around the roads and bridges of our town. While some may treat this subject as relatively or completely unimportant, this could not be further from the truth. As shown by what can happen with things like flash floods, landslides and so forth, the proper management of waste and rain water runoff is very important and should be handled in an evidence-based way rather than a cobbling together of a budget line item here and there. While a lot of the calls for more infrastructure funding and better infrastructure management are over the top, this is not one of those messages and not one of those subjects that should be easily dismissed or set aside.
Analysis
The potentially nasty (if not deadly) effects of improper water runoff management can manifest in a number of ways and this has been seen both in the United States and around the rest of the world. For example, there are the heavy dust particles found in stream networks in areas near roads and bridges. Such was found to be alarmingly present and highly concerning in the case of the area around the Yangtze River Delta in China. A study on the subject explained that street dust particles consisted of what are known as "sinking" particles from vehicle exhaust, windblown urban soil, house dusts and industrial discharges. Due to the fact that streets are generally impervious and not as porous and such as other lands (e.g. embankments), there will tend to be elevated levels of toxic materials such as metallic substances and so forth. Street dust is commonly and pervasively transported into the receiving waters during rainfall events and it affects the water quality of the streams, rivers and lakes into which the water seeps and flows. This can be no small matter when the roads and bridges in question are in or around a river delta like the Yangtze one mentioned above. Other factors aggravate the situation including the amount of rain, the amount of sunlight, how the different parts of the streams and so forth flow, the particles in the air that can be dragged into the earth by the rain and so forth (Zhao, Wang, Chen & Yin, 2009).
Another concern that El Paso government and concerned citizens should take into account are pH levels. Indeed, pH levels in waters and soils are a concern as is the prevailing temperature, the flow rate, the amount of dissolved oxygen and so forth. All of this has an effect on the composition and effects that lead to (or aggravate) soil erosion, water runoff issues and so on. Urban areas in particular are an interesting test case because the network of tunnels and pathways that runoff water takes in those areas is usually less than conventional. These unique network compositions can lead to problems. Just as a few examples, wastewater often ends up getting mixed up with regular runoff water, combined sewer overflows are consistent sources of intermittent pollution in urban areas, solid particles in the water can lead to deposits building up and flushing of accumulated sewer sediment is one of the major sources of pollutants in urban wet-weather flow discharges. One particularly nasty substance that can arise out of this entire situation is phosphorous. It is mainly present in sewage (or sewage-laded waters) as a substance called orthophosphate. Given that the substance is an essential nutrient element, phosphorous can be utilized by microorganisms present in the water and/or the soil. While that may not sound like a bad thing, the release of phosphorous into the sediment in sewer serves as a threat to the overall water environment because of the eutrophication of water bodies. Eutrophication is the process by which a body of water becomes laden with dissolved nutrients (like phosphates) and this leads to a depletion a dissolved oxygen, a problem that was mentioned by this same source (Haiyan, Liang, Mingyi & Xiaoran, 2013).
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