"Streams of Hope"

Have you ever dreamed of swimming in an orange, green, white, or even purple river? Sounds pretty awesome, right? Wrong. That is what the extremely polluted Nashua River that travelled through Massachusetts and New Hampshire looked like for a long time, until someone decided to take a stand.

In the 1960’s, this 56 mile long river was so polluted from dyes in the wastewater that it would turn colors! The color changing was so unpredictable that locals would even place bets on what color the river would be the next day. The fumes from the river alone were so toxic that children had to be rushed to the hospital for tetanus shots when they got too close. Marion Stoddard, a local to the area, decided to make a difference. She sent samples of the water to officials and made a proposal—they were going to clean the water to the point where everyone could swim in the river. People laughed and told her to be realistic, but she persisted and, with the help of many others, found ways to clean up their river. Mill treatment plants were built along the river, mill owners began to treat their waste properly, and locals monitored the quality of the water. Today, the river is just how Marion Stoddard wanted: clean enough to swim in.

I think it is awesome that Marion Stoddard did this for her community. She set a really good example of how we all need to be more careful with how we treat our environment, and how one person can make all the difference. I think that water supply is extremely important, and pollution like this could have seriously hurt their community.

In this article, it said that the fumes caused paint on nearby buildings to blacken. This couldn’t have looked very nice, but, in addition to its unsightly appearance, the fumes were very dangerous to everyone’s health. As I mentioned before, children were often rushed to the doctor to get a shot when they got too near the water. Environmental authorities classified the Nashua as “unfit for sewage disposal”. If it weren’t for Marion’s involvement, who knows how long the river would have stayed polluted? Its quality could have gotten even worse!

I think we all need to be a little more involved in the quality of local water. We use water for almost everything we do, and without it we would be in serious trouble. I’m glad that someone had the courage to stand up for their community to bring a problem to everyone’s attention and stick to their ideas. Water is recycled constantly, so let’s not ruin the only water we’ve got!