Brandon Turbeville
October 3, 2018
Satellite imagery has discovered Carolina rivers so polluted their streams appear dark from outer space. These streams, unfortunately, are not only polluting and damaging water quality throughout the Carolina’s but also pouring into the ocean.
As Abbie Bennett of the Herald Sun wrote,
Satellite imagery has discovered Carolina rivers so polluted their streams appear dark from outer space. These streams, unfortunately, are not only polluting and damaging water quality throughout the Carolina’s but also pouring into the ocean.
As Abbie Bennett of the Herald Sun wrote,
A NASA satellite is tracking flooding in the Carolinas following Hurricane Florence, and its images show dark, polluted water flowing from rivers into the Atlantic Ocean.
Nearly 8 trillion gallons of rain fell across North Carolina during the storm, according to the National Weather Service in Raleigh’s estimate.
That rain led to catastrophic flooding across the state, and has polluted rivers, streams, creeks and their outflows along the coast, NASA’s satellite images show.
One image captured on Sept. 19 shows the New River, White Oak River and Adams Creek south of Cape Lookout and the deeply discolored water that appears dark brown — or even black.
The color of the water in the image “reveals how soils, sediments, decaying leaves, pollution, and other debris have discolored the water in the swollen rivers, bays, estuaries, and the nearshore ocean,” according to NASA.But that isn’t the only material floating in North and South Carolina’s rivers. Floodwaters from Hurricane Florence were also responsible for the deaths of 3.4 million chickens and thousands of pigs in the state’s notorious factory farm system. While many Americans were horrified to see that these animals were left to suffer and drown, an admittedly horrible and inhumane fate, the issue of factory farming in general was ignored, i.e. the reason why millions of chickens and thousands of pigs were housed in giant factories to begin with.
