Friday, May 25, 2007

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

4 comments:

DaveO said...

I've had lamprey swirl around my feet as I launched at the mouth of the Brule River and had to use my paddle as a pole to get through the Eurasian Milfoil on some inland lakes. Methinks the barn door is open and the horse is loose. They need to shut the damn thing before the rest of the horses are loose.

Silbs said...

Passions are rising over all this. Today's paper announced the discovery of the fish virus in Lake Michigan. Hold on, the ride is gaining speed...down hill

Captn O Dark 30 and Super Boo said...

Buckle up and hold on--- What a mess!

Michael said...

Silbs, would you please take more care! You snatched this post right out of my head when I was busy trying to write my copy of it (see my blog for Friday...).