Protecting Clean and Healthy Waters
Facing our challenges:
Good water quality will continue to be important to all Missourians. It is also essential to the health of the state's plants and animals. Threats to our stream and river habitats include uncontrolled storm water runoff, chemical pollution, water depletion and soil erosion (which alters stream channels, scours away stream banks and covers underwater habitat with sediment). Because stream problems often begin “uphill,” maintaining or improving the health of any stream or river requires cooperation among all those who live or work within its watershed.
Goal: The Conservation Department will focus efforts to increase the health of Missouri streams.
Results we want to achieve:
- Healthy watersheds that sustain fully functioning streams.
- Streams managed for long-term health using the best scientific information available.
- Missourians directly involved in the conservation of Missouri's waters.
- Improved water quality and quantity to sustain healthy and diverse aquatic life.
What we will do:
- Prior to the 2008 school year, develop a stream education program for Missouri students to increase their understanding of how land use and water quality affect the lives and health of people, fish, forests and wildlife.
- Increase the number of volunteer Stream Teams to 6,000 to expand Missourians' personal involvement in protecting stream and water resources.
- Provide private landowners with more affordable and effective options to control stream bank erosion by testing six new methods on Conservation Areas by 2012.
- Manage all riparian corridors on Conservation Areas to serve as role models for healthy streams by 2030.
- Work with citizens to increase the effectiveness of federal programs dedicated to restoring lost floodplain habitats along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.
- By 2010, provide publications, web pages, and video to private landowners, communities and developers that communicate effective techniques to protect, restore and manage streams for longterm conservation benefits.
What Missourians tell us
Almost two-thirds of all Missourians worry “a great deal” about pollution of rivers, streams and lakes (63 percent) and pollution of drinking water (66 percent).
Almost two-thirds (65 percent) of those polled said they worry “a great deal,” “a fair amount” or“a little” about channelized or altered streams.
In the last 15 years, participation in stream protection programs has grown to include more than 40,500 volunteers in more than 2,650 Stream Teams statewide.
