Louisiana Polluted Water In Galveston?

[ToolMan]

Most everyone here knows one of the reasons Galvelstons water is so murky, muddy, or brown is because all of the mud from the Mississippi River. My question is - will the polluted water pumped from NO and drainied into the Mississippi make it to Galveston?

[RedScare]

Galveston's water looks brown and murky by and large because the rivers that empty into it are brown and murky. The Trinity and San Jacinto rivers send silt and mud into Galveston Bay, then into the Gulf. However, the Gulf Stream may bring some of the toxic water this way. Most would be diluted by the time it gets here.

[Lowbrow]

Don't worry I'm sure most of the pollution goodness will be absorbed by our shellfish long before you go swimming in it.

(jk)

You are correct in assuming that some of the Mississippi and Atchafalya sediment plumes makes it to Galveston shores. I don't think pollution will be too much of an issue. The Gulf is a huge body of water and pollutants tend to be heavy.

[kjb434]

Very little of the murky Mississippi waters will get anywhere near Galveston.

RedScare is correct in that the Trinity and San Jacinto are the culprit. The Brazos and several other streams are also guilty of darkening the water.

Most of the Mississippi water and sediment load falls of the continental shelf (one of the biggest reasons Louisiana is losing marshlands). The Army Corps redirects large portios of the Mississippi back into the wetlands to rebuild the marshes. The process is slow but land is being built.

Most of the polluted waters will actually go into Lake Ponchartrain and not the Mississippi. This may actually be worse since the Lake doesn't have a current and is mostly tidal. Most of the pollutants will actually just settle in the lake. This shouldn't pose too much of a hazard since swimming in the lake has been prohibted for years. There is a Foundation dedicated to cleaning the lake to make it swimmable again. There work has just gotten harder. They almost had the lake passing tests to let people swim.

[MidtownCoog]

Well, I was in the Texas Hamptons (Jamica Beach) all weekend, and the water was was clear as a bell.

And the surf flat as a 12 year old.