Once again we will point out that South Florida gets the media attention (and also the token touch/lip service from our non-environmentally oriented governor) because of the showy spectacle of dead fish and colorful red tide and green algae, even though North Florida is in an equally dire crisis: Silver Springs, and the Rainbow River exemplify the continual demise of our iconic clear springs and rivers while our our governor, DEP and water management districts sit by allowing it to happen.
Writer Ellen Starbird has the solution: Lake Okeechobee is a state disaster and it will require political will to regulate the polluters who make their profit margin off the free service of industrial waste dumping into Lake Okeechobee provided by the state of Florida.
Here we have the solution for all Florida. Stop the polluters and excess water pumping.
Of course we can if we want to and have the will to pay the price.
Political will.
It will take new leaders
Read the complete article here in the Lehigh Acres Citizen.
Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
jim.tatum@oursantaferiver.org
– A river is like a life: once taken,
it cannot be brought back © Jim Tatum
Call it what it is — pollution
By Staff | Oct 28, 2020
The solution must be to end the pollution into the lake, and clean the lake up. Not helpful is pretending it will all be OK, nor get regional about which side of the state should absorb the lion’s share of the lake’s polluted discharge (euphemistically referred to as “freshwater” in the pollution-collaborating local press).
When the Oklahoma city terrorist blew up the Alfred Murrah building with a bomb made of phosphorus laced fertilizer, the press did not wax poetic about the nutritional value of the highly reactive chemical compound. Nobody said, hey that McVeigh fellow really added some nutrition to the day care center he blew sky high.
But when the Army Corp of Engineers decides to dump sludge down the Caloosahatchee river, we are bleatingly told by the obsequious media that “fresh water” full of “nutrients” from Lake Okeechobee will be released into our drinking supply water of the river. Stop it. Massive doses of a chemical compound are unsafe at certain levels. Chemicals that can aid plant growing value to dirt, are yet pollutants when dumped in the water. Chemical compounds do not nutritionalize the water, they pollute it. Lake Okeechobee should be cleaned. Clarity of discussion is essential if we are to face this obligation as citizens.
Ellen Starbird
Cape Coral
