Where does the all the pollution in the Chesapeake Bay come from? How does get there?
The government has made it illegal for people or companies to dump harmful things into the Chesapeake Bay. So most of the pollution in the Bay doesn’t come from any one person or company. Most of the pollution is what’s called “non-point source” pollution. It is pollution that you can’t trace back to one specific place or source. It comes from lots of different people and places. All of us contribute in some way to non-point source pollution, just from things that we do in our everyday lives. Pollution comes from cars, construction, chemicals and fertilizer that we put on our lawns, trash, sewage, and lots of other things. Usually the way that most of the pollution gets into the Bay is by runoff. After it rains, water washes the pollution into the sewers, streams, rivers, and then into the Bay. Also, pollution gets into the air and then falls into the Bay.
