OPINION: Pollution in Idaho’s Man-Made Ponds

Idaho is a beautiful state that has much to offer in the outdoors. There are beautiful scenery from the Sawtooth and Bitterroot Mountain ranges to the desolate Craters of the Moon national monument. However, Idahoans also value Idaho’s waterways as much as its landscape. The problem is that ponds and lakes that are designed for people to swim in can be disgusting and ultimately impact the greater ecosystem of Idaho, due largely to the humans who use them. 

Man-made ponds in and around Boise, Idaho can have the greatest impact due to the number of people that visit them. Humans have a huge impact on the environment no matter how much they think they can protect it. Humans alter the landscape to fit their needs such as digging ponds where the land used to be flat such as the Esther Simplot Park near downtown Boise or building a dam in order to pool up water in a canyon such as Lucky Peak state park. These are two ways humans have affected the ecosystem by allowing bigger fish to grow in a lake rather than a fast-flowing river or introducing a new place for fish to live by digging ponds.  

Just the construction of the ponds can have an environmental impact such as discovering buried industrial waste while building Esther Simplot Park that had been buried there for multiple years. The pooling of water where it hasn’t traditionally pooled can also lead to other problems such as bacteria and diseases. Both Esther Simplot Park and a lower portion of Luck Peak state park called Sandy Shores have both been closed previously due to the discovery of bacteria. Bacteria can hurt not just park goers but also the surrounding wildlife that can rely on the ponds to supply water. 

On top of bacteria hurting wildlife there’s also the trash that parkgoers leave. The amount of garbage and pollutants produced and left by parkgoers is insane. The trash left can be ingested by wildlife causing them to suffocate and die while in the pond creating a possibility for bacteria to spread into the pond causing it to shut down due to visitors getting sick from the water.  

If we as humans want to take it upon ourselves to alter the landscape and create new ponds for us to go swimming in, we should also take better care of the new landscape. This means incorporating ways for wildlife to adapt to the new landscape without greatly affecting them. We should also clean up after ourselves better rather than letting our trash kill the wildlife ultimately coming back to us in the form of a disease. We as a human race need to greatly change our way of taking care of this ever-changing world we live in. 

Connor Anderson can be reached at [email protected]