MAINTAINING THE CLIMAX 



95 



The speculators grow rich ; the buyers pay and lose. The public must 

 foot the bill of restoring such areas to their natural state because we 

 need them badly for water control and wildlife. 



Pollution: The pollution of inland and coastal waters by com- 

 mercial and industrial w r astes, sewage, and silt has destroyed aquatic 

 life of commercial, recreational, and sanitary value to the amount of 

 about $250,000.000 per year. 6 This loss, if applied to purifying our 



FIG. 49. Michigan, and every 

 other state, has its pollution 

 problems. Sewage is strongly 

 suspected in the spread of 

 "polio," though positive proof 

 is yet lacking. 



NSAf E m SUMMING 

 **? POLLUTED BY 



SEIAGE 

 pen. m HEALTH 



waters, would accomplish the task in some 15 years. The danger to 

 health is no small one. Thousands of eye, ear, nose and throat cases 

 very year are traced to swimming in polluted water. (Figs. 47, 48, 

 49.) Physicians uniformly note an increase of such cases with the first 

 warm days of spring, when the magnetism of the "ole swimmin' hole" 

 is strong. Coshocton, Ohio, a small city, in the spring of 1936 suffered 

 2,000 cases of gastro-enteritis because the Tuscarawas river over- 

 flowed and its pollution entered the city water supply. Typhoid is 

 an everpresent danger in populated areas of flood. Twenty million 

 city people in this country drink untreated water, 7 and endure 

 periodic epidemics of amoebic dysentery and other diseases. 



6 Renner, G. T., op. cit., p. 91. 

 7 Chase, Stuart, op. cit., p. 140, 



