Same Old Same Old

Tags

Department of Natural Resources, economic development, EPA, Lake of the Ozarks, pollution, water

The Lake of the Ozarks, satellite view.

I’ve talked a lot about books on this blog, but one I haven’t mentioned yet is Traci Angel’s The Scars of Project 459: The Environmental Story of the Lake of the Ozarks. I’m not especially fond of the book; I think the title promises more than the book delivers, and it’s written in a choppy-sentence, newspaper-journalism style that wears me out after a while. (If you want a deeper, more comprehensive account of the lake’s origins, I recommend Damming the Osage, which I have written about before.) But whatever its perceived deficiencies, the book offers a great glimpse into one of the enduring truths of the lake: it’s all about the money.

The Lake of the Ozarks is above all else a developer’s lake, designed and built to extract as much possible money from all conceivable uses. For all their garish commercialism, even Table Rock, Beaver, and the other big Ozark lakes have an ostensible “flood control” justification, and once in a while that justification actually emerges. But the Lake of the Ozarks doesn’t even have that. It’s a commercial enterprise, start to finish.

One of the stories told in The Scars of Project 459 is the notorious “goose poop” incident of 2009, and the book is worth reading just for that. The sequence of events runs roughly like this: Department of Natural Resources routine testing reveals high E. coli levels near the public beaches of the park, right before a major holiday weekend. DNR sits on the report until the holiday weekend is over, then releases it. Howls from environmentalists and public health advocates over the suspicious timing of the report’s delay and release brings the governor at the time (Jay Nixon) down to the lake to announce a major cleanup campaign. Howls from local businesses lead to a new suspect in the E. coli reading: a flock of geese that had been loitering suspiciously in the area and a coincidental heavy rainfalll that had surely, surely, caused the spike in contamination. Heads roll at the DNR. Winter comes, the incident is more or less forgotten, and no comprehensive effort to manage the lake’s water quality takes place. A comprehensive effort, you see, would require two things that are anathema to the powers-that-be around the lake: the expenditure of money for a public good, and cooperation among the four counties that comprise its local government.

The lake watershed is indeed a complex system, and no single source of contamination can be blamed for all its environmental ills. A 2014 report from the U.S. Geological Survey and Missouri DNR about surveys conducted in later years didn’t exonerate the geese, but it also took notice of contamination from local sewage treatment facilities during the frequent times that rainfall causes overflows of those facilities, household septic systems that have outlived their effectiveness, and leaking septic pits from sources around the lake, including (ironically enough) one in the state park itself. If all those episodes teach us anything, it’s that understanding the lake’s water quality requires science, and lots of it.

Which is why it’s so dispiriting to read the news today and see the usual passel of Missouri congresspeople pressuring the EPA to take the Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir off its list of “impaired” waterways, where they were placed in November. The EPA’s list of impaired waterways included 481 bodies of water that both the state and the feds agreed were impaired, which is troubling enough. The state did not include the two big lakes and 38 other Missouri water bodies on its list, but the EPA disagreed with that decision, bringing the overall number up to 521. (On the semi-bright side, the two agencies agreed to remove 44 bodies of water from the list.)

So the state and the feds are in disagreement over the science on about eight percent of the total listings. So why are the congresspeople, none of them scientists or even remotely interested in science as far as I can tell, so worked up? A passage in the AP story gives the clue. “The letter said the impaired designations ‘would have significant impacts on families, landowners, small businesses,’ and on the state’s economy. . . . For example, the listing could force local governments to update wastewater facilities, potentially costing them millions of dollars, [Congressman Blaine] Luetkemeyer’s spokeswoman Georgeanna Sullivan said.”

Good heavens! Updating their wastewater facilities! What horrors. [Sorry for the sarcasm here.]

The congresspeople’s letter also says that fish kills at the lakes “were not verified by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources or the Missouri Department of Conservation.” Notice that it doesn’t deny that the fish kills occurred, which can easily be determined by looking at local news reports. Now again, the science behind fish kills is complicated; sometimes they occur simply through seasonal causes, and other times there are human-related causes. But the disingenuous phrasing of the letter reveals a desire to mislead, to cast doubt, where none needs to exist.

The more things change, as they say, the more they remain the same. Go to the lake and enjoy yourself, and if the water smells a little funny or looks a little green, don’t worry. It’ll wash on downstream eventually.

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About Those ‘Indian Trail Trees’ . . .

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forests, Indians, mythology, trails, trees, water

An ‘Indian trail tree’ in Georgia

Every  so often I read something about “signal trees,” “thong trees,” “Indian trail trees,” or similar designations. These are trees like the one above, which supposedly were bent by long-ago Indians to mark trails, the location of water sources, food caches, and whatnot. I recall people pointing them out to me when I was a kid.

Signal Tree sign near Stone Mountain, Georgia

OK, I’ll admit to some skepticism.

Make that a lot of skepticism.

The most significant Indian nation of the Ozarks, the Osage, were pretty well moved out by 1825. So any signal tree would have to be approximately 200 years old by now. Would the bending process really keep them that small? I’m not saying it’s not possible, but for comparison, here’s a 200-year-old tree (by ring count) that blew over in New Jersey a couple of years ago:

Now that’s a big tree.

Second, would an Osage Indian really need direction on how to find water? Here’s a clue: Head downhill. The Ozarks are not exactly desert.

As for trail markers, I would have the same question. If you’ve ever gone out in the forest with someone experienced in woodcraft, you’ve probably marveled at their uncanny ability to know right where they are most of the time, not through any mystical reading of signs and symbols, but through the hard-earned knowledge that is gained from lifelong experience. I wonder if an Indian nation would have needed trail markers of this sort. And since the Osage were, shall we say, less than hospitable to strangers in their hunting grounds, they certainly wouldn’t have posted trail markers for those unfamiliar with the territory. This isn’t I-55, after all, where people need signs to the next rest stop.

And let’s remember that the Ozarks have been logged over multiple times. Granted, a logger wouldn’t stop to bother with a bent tree like these, but how about a charcoal burner? Or a stave bolt harvester? Trees just didn’t last that long unless they were in people’s yards, cemeteries, or other such protected locations.

These trees are curious and interesting to see, but for now I’ll ascribe their origin to a simpler explanation: a tree is blown over in the forest. In falling, it bends down its neighbor, which survives. Over time, the blown-down tree rots away, while the survivor sends up a new trunk from its bent-down position, causing the peculiar figure-four shape. And thus a signal tree is formed.

I’m open to persuasion otherwise, but for now, count me as a skeptic.

A Dose of Something Like Reality

Tags

freezing, history, water, winter

The overnight dose of cold weather caught me off guard, and I woke up this morning with a frozen pipe. My first response, predictably, was frustration and a momentary dose of depression – My day is ruined! – followed in short order by a plan to get it thawed out and see if it has burst. A burst pipe is not the end of life as we know it. At worst it’s a damn nuisance.

As a novelist who writes about past eras, my next though was of course to think about such setbacks for our ancestors. Frozen pipes did not become a problem until the advent of indoor plumbing, and in the era when homebuilders relied on designs from before the indoor-plumbing era, I doubt if they were much of a problem either. Houses were built to keep in the heat, typically had cellars where feasible, and we only large enough to accommodate the direct needs of the family. With one centrally located bathroom in the house, and one kitchen sink, and a laundry room that was likely to be detached with shut-off valves for cold weather, it wasn’t too much of a task to defend your pipes against cold air.

With the housing booms of the twentieth century came inexpensive construction methods. Deficiencies of construction could be compensated by cheaper and ostensibly better energy sources; the gas furnace replaced the woodstove, forced-air fans took the place of radiators. But you also see pipes running up exterior walls, and (as in the case of my house) concrete-slab construction that in some cases puts water pipes overhead in the attic spaces.

The worst house I ever lived in for frozen pipes was in Louisiana, where keeping houses cool in the summer was much more of an issue and as a result pier-and-beam construction was the norm. Whenever a bad cold snap came, and they came like clockwork every two or three years, everybody in the neighborhood would be out under their houses, blow driers and heat tape in hand.

I’m not claiming that life would be better if we had to go out to the well and bring in buckets of water, but I do recognize that frozen pipes are something of a modern problem. So I watch my space heater and wait for the thaw.