Rivers Rock
Rivers provide us with beauty, recreation, transportation, electricity, wildlife habitat, water for manufacturing and agriculture, and most important, water to drink. What would we do without them?
What is a river?
A river is a naturally flowing body of water. Streams, brooks, creeks and smaller rivers are all part of bigger river systems.
Almost all rivers in the United States flow into the ocean. An exception is the water flowing into the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
Rivers all flow from a high point to the lowest point. Water will always find the easiest way to go downhill.
The importance of water
Most of the Earth’s water is in the oceans. But people and most animals can’t live by drinking ocean water. It is too salty.
Water that is good to drink is called freshwater. About half of the drinking water in the U.S. comes from rivers. But freshwater from rivers and other sources is in short supply. People have relied on rivers to: • Irrigate crops. In the dry West, about 80 percent of the river water humans use is used to grow food.
• Power machinery that ground wheat into flour or spun plant fiber into cloth.
• Help make virtually all products, from paper to computer chips.
• Make steam to run coal and nuclear power plants and provide water to cool those plants.
• Create electricity. About 10 percent of the electrical power in America is created by dams on rivers.
Although they’re not as important to transportation as they once were, rivers still connect cities and help people move goods from one place to another. You might notice when you look at a map that many U.S. cities are built on the banks of major rivers.
The state of our rivers
Experts say only about half of our rivers and streams meet the standards set up by our government to keep our water clean and safe. People are worried about having enough clean water. All over the world, people are working to protect rivers.