What Kills The Environment

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When I sat down to think about what I wanted to write for my first article on this site the only thing I could think of was those huge piles of black snow sitting, slowly melting in all of these parking lots around town. I remember I use to play in those but not when they were black.

It made me think about where all of that disgusting snow goes. What is all in the snow and why exactly is it black? What I’ve come to realize is pretty alarming.

Whether you live in a big city or small town finding a place to put snow is always a problem. It doesn’t matter if you shovel your own driveway or someone is clearing the streets the question, and often the problem we all face, is where should we put the snow?

I remember countless times piling the snow right beside the driveway or seeing trucks plowing the snow to the outskirts of their parking lot which is perfectly find but where it goes after that is the problem.

What we don’t realize is that when we plow the snow up we also plow up all of the trash from people littering, all the oils and chemicals from cars, and who knows what else while we do it. Some may think that this is a good way to dilute the chemicals or break down the trash easier which may be the case but we need to think about where that pollution is going. It goes straight to our rivers and lakes and makes it there quicker and before we can stop it.

You can walk around the city of Sioux Falls on all of our bike trails but every half mile it seems like you walk right over a sewer pipe that empties into a huge ditch filled with garbage that leads right to our streams. There has to be a better way of doing this and getting rid of these piles of snow instead of letting them run into our streams.

I know I don’t quite understand the sewer systems and how everything works throughout our community but seeing all this garbage at the foot of our river is alarming and knowing that it’s all coming from…..us is scary.

I guess the issue isn’t the snow piling up and where we put it. It’s just us as citizens not doing our part by using trash facilities or placing our chemicals in the right place.

We have a hazardous waste facility here in Sioux Falls that is free to use. I learned that just googling Sioux Falls pollution but what also pops up googling that is that the Big Sioux is also one of the dirtiest rivers in the country.

How could we let this happen? How can we prevent it from continuing to happen? I don’t know the answers on a large scale but I know that I can make a difference just by writing about it.

Thanks for reading and be sure to play your part and dispose of your waste properly to prevent our community from becoming one of the countries dirtiest too.


AshleyStudent Writer, Sioux Falls, SD

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