What Now?

There is an old joke in which you are given a scenario in which you arrive home to find you have left the bath water running and the stopper in the drain. The house is flooded to knee level, and you are asked to choose between two actions. You can either pull out the plug or run around and open all the doors to let the water out. It is, of course, a trick question since your first action should be to turn off the water. That is, stop the cause before applying the cures.

It has, it appears, finally dawned on some folks (environmental groups) that the house (environment) is flooded with water (pollutants and life forms) and that we ought to turn off the tap. In this case, the house is our Great Lakes and the tap is the St. Lawrence Seaway. It is, it seems, ballast water from the bowels of ocean going ships that has brought so much havoc to our area. The Zebra Mussels are one of their "gifts.

Now, it remains to be seen if we are up to taking this medication and whether or not our Neighbors to the north will agree (Canada has a similar investment in all this). Meanwhile, shipping companies are telling us that they would welcome laws mandating treatment of their bilge water...if only they all had to do it. That is, I can't do it if he doesn't because it would put me at a financial disadvantage.

If someone doesn't do something soon, we will have to replace our dry suits with Haz Med suits in our basic paddling kit. It is getting harder and harder to...

Paddle safe...

DS