It is wonderful to live here in Southeastern Vermont, especially if you love the outdoors. We seem to have miles of waterways and trails and wonderful back roads to use for fishing, hunting, skiing or snowmobiling, biking and hiking. In fact, that is both a good thing and a problem. When times are good, we forget how quickly things can change. Just look at the economy if you think I exaggerate.
I grew up in a very rural town in Northeastern Ohio. We fished, swam and generally spent our growing up years playing in the watershed of a small river that meandered along until it emptied into Lake Erie. By the time I was in high school, a frightening disease called polio was afflicting a significant number of young people. We learned that one major source of the disease was the water we were playing in.
This situation did not spur any major cleanup and sometime later you probably heard about the "river that caught on fire." Yes, it was the Cuyahoga River Watershed that we were playing in.
I personally saw how fast an environment that was clean and healthy could become a place of filth and disease. That happens when we don't take care of what we have. As my mother used to tell me, it is easier to keep your room clean than to let it go and then have to do a major job to get back to where you should be. She was right! And that is even more true of our wonderful environment than it is of a kid's bedroom. Get the message?
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Thanks for the posting! How true it is: things can change so quickly when times aren't that good. Whether it's a river or the economy, or something else altogether. Or, perhaps in our situation, when rivers and economies collide. Neil Kamman, who runs the state lab where we've had our water samples tested, told us at last year's Annual Meeting that we've basically got good, clean water down here in southeastern Vermont...and kudos to the WRWA and to keep up the good work . Well, that would be great but just recently we learned that, given the tough budgetary times we're in, they might cut this water sampling program. What does that mean for us? Well, we're not sure. One likely scenario would be no lab, no Water Quality Monitoring Program. Then again, perhaps Obama's stimulus package will trickle down and enable us to keep the program going for another season.
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