Sources of Water Pollution In spite of notorious in-
dustrial pollution along the Mississippi, the U.S. mil-
itary was the major source of water pollution. The
military was responsible for approximately one-
third of all of the toxic waste in the United States,
much of which affected water quality. Almost 10 per-
cent of all military bases had contaminated areas on
the Superfund list of highly toxic waste sites. The
EPA, however, was forbidden to investigate or sue
the military, so little was done about this source of
pollution. Pollution included chemical residue, pe-
troleum, explosives, organics, as well as rusting hard-
ware.
The chemical industry was second on the list of
water polluters. Inorganic and organic compounds
often leached into surface and subsurface water
near chemical plants. In many cases, the toxicity of
various synthetic compounds continued to be un-
known. No one wanted to abandon the use of chemi-
cals, but the standards for disposal of chemical waste
remained hard to enforce in the 1990’s. The oil in-
dustry added to the impact of the chemical industry,
from both drilling sites and refineries.
Municipal waste, at least, had become less of a
source of water pollution in the 1990’s, as most
towns and cities had adequate wastewater disposal
facilities, although some were overwhelmed at times
by chemical waste streams from local industries. Ap-
proximately three-quarters of all municipal facilities
provided at least secondary treatment for their
wastewater by the 1990’s. Unfortunately, some small
towns still did not have adequate facilities, and the
facilities of some major cities continued to exceed
capacity.
Agriculture was becoming an increasingly impor-
tant source of water pollution in the 1990’s. Runoff
from fertilizer and insecticides and herbicides had
always been a problem and continued to be a major
source for nonpoint pollution for some pollutants
such as nitrogen and dissolved solids. Factory farm-
ing became an important aspect of American agri-
culture in the 1990’s, as farm animal production in-
creased by 25 percent from 1980 to 1997. Cattle
feedlots and hog and poultry farms produced a
large amount of organic waste from very small
spaces. In 1997, the waste treatment pond for one
corporate hog farm in eastern North Carolina over-
flowed because of heavy rains. The runoff from the
eight-acre lagoon flooded nearby cotton and to-
bacco fields and entered the New River, causing a
ten million fish kill along a seventeen-mile stretch of
the river. The contaminated water flowed into
nearby wetlands, resulting in the closing of 364,000
acres to shell fishing for months. The EPA found it
difficult to regulate these factory farms under exist-
ing legislation, and state regulations varied widely,
but most states provided little regulation concern-
ing water quality of these large animal facilities.
Impact Issues of water pollution increasingly came
to be connected to issues of water usage in the
1990’s. Americans were becoming aware that in spite
of its apparent abundance in the United States,
water was a commodity that could be exhausted in
some areas. Environmental groups began to couple
water usage and water pollution, indicating that
water pollution decreased the availability of a finite
resource. Water pollution remained a health and
recreation issue during the decade, but it began to
take on a larger significance as some Americans be-
gan to look toward the future.
Further Reading
Blatt, Harvey.America’s Environmental Report Card:
Are We Making the Grade?Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 2005. Good coverage of water pollution is-
sues in a broad context.
Clean Water Network and Natural Resources De-
fense Council. America’s Animal Factories: How
States Fail to Prevent Pollution from Livestock Waste.
Washington, D.C.: Author, 1998. Impact of fac-
tory farming on water quality.
Rogers, Peter.America’s Water: Federal Roles and Re-
sponsibilities. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999.
Good analysis of the role of the federal govern-
ment in ensuring water quality.
Rosenbaum, Walter A.Environmental Politics and Pol-
icy. 7th ed. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2008. Pro-
vides a broad political context for analysis of
water pollution issues.
John M. TheilmannSee also Agriculture in the United States; Air pol-
lution; Earth Day 1990;Earth in the Balance; Science
and technology.The Nineties in America Water pollution 907