No, it doesn’t make any difference to the river at all. The pollution is largely coming from groundwater that was contaminated by historical practices.. not current ones. The problem is how to clean up the groundwater–and that’s not an easy thing to do. Just trying to point out that we don’t allow direct discharge to rivers without strict controls any more. Nor would we allow companies to pollute the groundwater today. The problem is how to remediate the sins of the past.

EDITOR NOTE–glad we got that straightened out. 🙂

EDITOR NOTE–Eric, your explanation makes it all clear. Perhaps we can say it is “dribbled, leaked, spilled, discharged, leached but not dumped.”

They don’t dump into the river, they pollute the groundwater that flows into the river–much better practice.