Issues Facing Our Rivers

Like most rivers in Iowa, the Skunk has been significantly affected by various human activities.
According to the USGS National Water Quality Assessment Program, these issues include:

* Soil Erosion/Sedimentation: Large quantities of soil are being transported to streams. This causes increased turbidity and siltation and thus degrades the aquatic habitat and aesthetic quality of the streams. Increased siltation is due both to overland erosion and to bank collapse. Excessive bank collapse is a result of tiling, wetland draining, and impervious surfaces that rapidly convey large quantities of water from rain and melting snow into streams. In essence, human activities over the past 150 years have converted north-central Iowa from a "sponge" to a "storm sewer".

* Toxic Contamination: Migration of pesticides, and other chemicals, to surface and ground-water may endanger public water supplies and can have impacts on biological organisms in the water.

* Eutrophication: Agricultural and urban runoff of fertilizers and industrial/municipal sewage effluent increases biological production in streams and reservoirs which causes reduced species diversity and altered species composition. High fertilizer concentration in stream water results in excessive growth of algae. Biological decay of the algae by bacteria lowers the oxygen concentration in the water below the level required for survival of some species.

* Other human impacts include decreased aesthetic quality due to large quantities of trash deposited in the river corridor and the introduction of non-native species (e.g., the common carp).