Turn on the tap for a cool glass of water and, if you live in Minneapolis or Saint Paul, you are drinking the Mississippi River. In essence, a small part of the Mississippi is flowing directly through your home. Mississippi water is pumped from the river through a filtering plant and into pipes that lead to your sink. The water you drink passes through your body as it does its job of keeping you alive. After your body has used the water, you flush it down the toilet, where it flows through sewer pipes to the Pigs Eye sewage treatment plant, and finally it's discharged back into the Mississippi River.
Clean water is essential for outdoor recreation, many industrial processes, and life itself.
The rest is pumped from wells that tap deep underground aquifers. The demands we place on the Mississippi for drinking water will increase. Polluted water is expensive to purify, can cause disease, and reduces outdoor recreation opportunities. A significant cause of Mississippi River water pollution comes from fertilizers, lawn chemicals, and grass clippings washing from urban yards into the storm sewer. You can do your part in keeping the Mississippi clean by reducing the percentage of your yard maintained as lawn.