What is Phosphates?
Phosphates are living organisms that come from many different sources.
They come from human, animal, and industrial wastes. It can also come from human
disturbance of the land. Phosphates are all around us, its in are grass on are
front lawn. It’s even in our crops or our little flower gardens. A lot of
phosphates come from animal waste such as cattle, deer, and elk, and most of
there waste ends up getting washed into a stream, creek, a river or even a lake.
Phosphates get washed into a waterway mostly by rain or when it snows and
melts. There is also other ways that phosphates find there way into a waterway.
They can get there by watering your lawn or even if you climb down a bank to get
to the river, the dirt that your stepping on contains phosphates and the dirt
that falls into the water release the phosphates into the river. A waterway that
is very slow or still will collect a lot of phosphates. Draining swamps and
marshes for farmland or shopping malls release phosphates that have lain dormant
for many years. When people drain wetlands there is now no filter for silt and
phosphorus. Allowing phosphorus to enter waterways. The phosphates in runoff
also cause changes in the aquatic life of the waterways they run into. It kills
off fresh water life and is replaced with fewer numbers of species that can
tolerate low levels of dissolved oxygen.