The Riverwood Mystery

1. Rick Barrett MikKloss James Karasch The Riverwood Mystery

2. What’s Ahead • What caused the Fish Kill • Facts • Visuals • Hypothesis • Result • Clean-Up • How to prevent in the future

3. Cause of Dead fish • Nitrate contamination

4. Facts • Fertilizer possesses a high amount of Nitrate • Nitrate doesn’t directly kill fish, it simply weakens their immune system, and disables their ability to reproduce; it does however, deprive the water of oxygen. Therefore, kills the fish • Bi-product of bombs • Water already claims a small amount of nitrate • Canada’s pollution laws aren’t as strict as the United States’

5. Geographical Facts • Just up stream from Riverwood, is the farm town “Farmville” • Up north in Canada, there’s a bomb factory in the town called Hiro-Shima-Eh’

9. Hypothesis • With the facts we know, we can conclude that the people of Farmville, have been dumping fertilizer in the river. And at the beginning of September, a storm came down through Riverwood from Canada, bringing the Nitrate pollution along with it. With the combined fertilizer and bomb plant contamination, the nitrate level grew to a dangerous point and…

10. Result • Everything in Snake River died of nitrate poisoning, leaving hundreds of people in Riverwood disappointed and upset. A disaster that could’ve so easily been avoided

11. Clean-up • The best method of clean up we found is to simply wait it out. Keep people from drinking water anywhere along the stream.

12. Questions/Comments?

13. Bibliography • http://freshaquarium.about.com/od/watercare/a/nitrates.htm • http://www.ec.gc.ca/ceqg-rcqe/English/Html/GAAG_Nitrate_WQG.cfm • Chemistry: In the Community