It's not long, and it brings the issue to a very personal level.
http://alternet.org/envirohealth/21908/
There was no barrier that could protect my nervous system from the neurotoxic pesticides that washed into the river from the fruit orchards and dry wheat farms that decorate the Columbia River Valley. There was no technology that could get the PCBs out of my fat cells. And there was no protection from the nuclear waste that spiked the waters of the Columbia River's Hanford Reach. (The idea of my swimming past the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in a lead suit was funny, but a nonstarter nonetheless. I swam through the most radioactive piece of land in the Western hemisphere with nothing but a five-millimeter wetsuit between me and the strontium-90, technetium-99, uranium and plutonium that plied the same waters I did.)
All of this begs the question, why would I risk my life by swimming the Columbia River? The answer was that I loved the river, and I swam in search of a way to help her. And I swam with the knowledge that I was part of the problem. The copper and asbestos dust that shaved off from the brake pads of my SUV sifted into storm drains and fouled salmon-spawning streams. The lights I left on sustained a demand for ecosystem-unfriendly hydropower. And when I flushed my toilet at the height of Portland's rainy winter season, it poured straight into the Willamette and Columbia Rivers.
