How can cities keep their rivers clean in the long term?

Question

Yahoo! Answers staff note: This is an official Yahoo! Answers Brain Bus question. Look here for more details:

http://uk.blog.360.yahoo.com/y_answrs_team_uk

Answer 1

i like the german blokes idea about battery powered boats. how clean is the lake compared to other city lake around the world????

Answer 2

There are several ways.

First thing is to remove the source of the problem which is waste products as already mentioned. Give all the local factories and waterworks a reasonable amount of time and some incentive to find an alternative way of doing what they do that doesn't involve polluting the rivers.

Secondly is to design a robot that swims around the river filtering the water and stopping every now and then to recharge its power source and clean its filters.

There may plants and animals that do this anyway but care must be taken not to upset the food chain or if possible to repair any damage that has already been done to the food chain.

If not, perhaps at some point in the future, genetic engineering will be sufficiently developed that we can design new species safely. Then we can design some kind of fish or plant that can keep the rivers clean and pretty.

Answer 3

this is very difficult to achieve due to the amount of pollutants in cities, such as cars, factories, litter etc. The only real way is to enforce industry to reduce pollution by setting pollution targets for each factory and fineing them for exceeding their levels, however this would be hard to implement and expensive to monitor. Another rather more ambitious plan would be to clean the water as it flows out of the city. This would involve diverting the water into an filtration system, to remove the impurities, not possible because of all the fish that would die. The only real solution is to find new cleaner forms of cars, trains etc and less polluting industries

Answer 4

They can make a scientific environmental assessment of the water table and all the pertinent facts. Then they can construct a plan.

It is interesting to not that eutrophic in Greek means "good water", whereas, it now refers to water nutrified to such an extent that the dissolved oxygen is depleted or the weed growth is excessive. Hyper (over) trophic (nutrified) might be a better word.?

Answer 5

EDUCATE THE PEOPLE FIRST! Take example from Germans!
Konigssee Lake from Bavaria is the cleanest Lake in Germany due to Prince Regent Luitpold of Bavaria who's love of nature made him allow only battery powered boats on the lake from 1909!

Answer 6

the local government officials should be strict on implementing their ordinances regarding on clean water act, there should be no squatters are not allowed to stay along the riverside to avoid throwing of garbage's and any liquid and solid wastes around the river, in order to meet a long term clean river.

Answer 7

Stop from dumping all kind of worse into the rivers

Answer 8

i think we are still a long way from having (long-term) enforceable commitment" to clean up the rivers.

Answer 9

Sorry i'm not very clever or I would be paid more than the people who are paid to sort these things out, and I know i'm not.

Answer 10

Prevent fertiliser run -off.