This is my post for #freewriters 2727 prompt water pollution hosted by
My boat is ready to set traps when I get back from the west coast. My sister asked where she was going to sit, and I told her she would need to find a spot, lol.
This day has started on the wrong foot. Last week, when I saw my primary doctor, she wanted me to call a gastroenterologist today. I called this morning, and they said I could be seen today at 2. I have never gotten in to see a doctor on the same day as I called for the appointment. I said that was fine with me. I told my husband this, and he told me he had an appointment at 1:15, so he could not take me. I called them back to reschedule, and they told me the doctor was only taking appointments today because she will be gone for the rest of the year. What kind of doctor sees a new patient and then leaves for 7 months? They set me up with another doctor for Wednesday at 10 a.m. I tell my husband this, and he reminds me I am leaving for the west coast on Wednesday. I called my daughter to see what time we are leaving and explained what was going on. She wanted to leave early, but said we could leave after the appointment.
I really hate not being able to drive myself places that I need to go. I have had 3 doctors tell me not to drive, one even said if he finds out I am driving, by law, he has to report me, and I will lose my license. I do not want to lose it because if they ever find out what is wrong with me, I will need to prove I am healthy enough to get it back, and it will cost a lot of money to get it.
I am also supposed to call the people who are doing the documentary on the river, but I can not find where I wrote their phone number down. I think she said they were with Backwoods Productions, but I am not sure if that name is correct. I tried googling that name and came up with several sites with the same name. I am not calling all of them. Anyway, I have debated on telling them the truth about what happened to the "river", they, like most people, believe it was water pollution from the freshwater that flowed into it that killed the lagoon. What these people do not connect is that the river crashed almost 10 years after they stopped all of the freshwater from entering the lagoon, so how could it be pollution from it? It died because they stopped all the freshwater from entering it. If you had a brackish water fish tank and only added saltwater, what do you think will happen to it? It will cause an algae bloom and kill everything in your tank. This is what they did, only on a bigger scale.
You see, our river is not a true river, it is, or was, a brackish water lagoon, and years ago, they dug an inlet which let saltwater come in, but it still had enough freshwater to keep it brackish. With all the new developments being built, what is the one thing they need? It is Freshwater!!!
My Dad had told me stories about Biscayne Bay in Miami, he said it had beautiful grass flats and lots of trout. After they dug the canals and stopped the freshwater from entering the river, everything died like it did here. They did the same thing at Tampa Bay, too. I am not sure of the dates back then, but it had to be in the 1930s or 40s. Was it pollution back then?
This is how they got public opinion on their side, I witnessed it. We have the Sebastian River, which is freshwater, and it flows into the lagoon. They would hold the water back until the salinity in the "river" got high, and then they would dump all of the freshwater at one time, which caused algae blooms that killed the fish. People would see all the freshwater with dead fish floating in it, and the state people told the news people it was polluted, and that is what caused the fish kills. The fishermen went to the meetings and were laughed at when they tried to tell the truth. They killed everything in our river, right down to the bottom of the food chain, the good algae, which sent a chain reaction, the shellfish had no food, and the oxygen was gone, too. Not only did fish, clams, oysters, shrimp, and seagrass die, but manatees, dolphins, and birds died. We were growing clams and lost everything.
The truth is, you can not have new developments without freshwater to supply them, and where do you think the freshwater for these places came from? They send it through treatment plants and sell it to the new homes and businesses. That is what happened to our "river".
photo is mine