My Dear Catawba,
A messenger has been swimming in my waters the past couple of days and has told me quite a bit about you. I find what she tells me is all fascinating, yet bitter.
Here I am, an 18 km long and 2 km wide lake - aqua blue right beside a tight urban area surrounded by pre Alpine mountains. I felt stressed and complained a lot, yet after listening to my messenger who shares this stuff about you with me daily (she swims in me but says she kayaks in you whenever she can stuck between two highways, and along a wastewater treatment plant and a superfund site, which reminds her all of the movie "Silkwood"), I have it easy compared to you! Wow!
My sole purpose is recreational! In the summer, thousands of tourists swim, bathe, kayak or paddle board on me. There are occasional regulated motor boats and a handful of motorised tour ships. In some winters, I freeze over, and these swimmers turn into ice skaters. There are very few fishers, who practice "catch and release".
The darkest of my history is a myth about a town that disappeared under the deep waters for being too sinful centuries ago, but that is a myth to explain the weekly "mysterious" ringing of church bells at noon on Saturday. Darker true history, is that at the bottom lay some World War Two bombs and left overs of eutrophication that took place in the 70s before the sewer system was installed at the cusp of urban growth.
But now, the people who live around me, are so proud of me and so happy to have me - always there, majestic, clean crisp, and.... theirs to enjoy with their eyes and their skin! They will never let my drinking water quality status disappear, eventhough in other areas some politicians and developers are really mismanaging things. I feel confident any swimmer can drink out of me. And as for the urine of those little naked babies? Ah, I am so clean and healthy, I can regenerate the water quality over a few urine leaks on my own!
As for you, my dear Catawba! What a majestic name! "Catawba" - People of the River. Your original Natives really lived with you and respected you. But from what I hear, Europeans came and started "managing" you? First to run mills along your many little tributaries, and then you were dammed for electricity creation, and then of course many urban areas were developed around you. So in fact, you are a river, not really a lake like me, yet concerning your current recreational services, you are used as a lake. You are some sort of lake-river hybrid. Dammed and Damned?
I hear you are supplied by many tributaries, which run through urban areas and the center city - what an exciting catchment area and it seems very romantic! Yet I hear these tributaries are also under stress from urbanization and construction, leading to strong sedimentation and erosion, which casue chocking of flora and fauna in some areas, but rip out entire trees in other areas and generally make storm water management tough to manage with acute flooding. I also hear that there is a lot of unseen stress on your tributaries, coming from domestic yard maintenance through pesticides and fertilizers. That sounds so awful! And what puzzles me even more, is that these tributaries all connected to your drinking water reservoir! How can you come close to being drinking water quality with all that stuff discharing into you? (I am drinking water quality and yet I am not even a drinking water reservoir - drinking water reservoirs are put behind very strict physical buffers here where I am located).
Not to panick too much, I do understand that the water catchment and water treatment is up to standards set by health and environmenmtal organizations, right? And you have serious professionals running these treatment plants?
But still, I hear you are used for so many other things, it makes me shudder - your water is used to cool power plants? How many millions of gallons of water is used for that? How do the changes in temperature affect the fish and other animals and plants? Also, there are toxic coal ash ponds right beside you seperated by an unregulated liner? Are you kidding me? That sounds like an science fiction horror story. What risk for all the citizens (how many are they? 800,000?) who depend on that reservoir for drinking!
And then I hear that many people fish in you, yet are advized to not eat the fish because there are left over toxins released by industry years and decades ago?
I also hear that there is a problem with pharmaceticals being released into the wastewater treatment stream, but which can not be totally eliminated, so now that too ends up in your water body?
I don't understand your people. Are they not proud? Are they not responsible? Are they not scared? Are they stupid and ignorant? They sound so Anti-Catawban to me. The opposite of the people who first lived with you.
Apparently, things were worse - in the 60s and 70s when development went crazy. Trust me, I know that - I was full of sewer too at one point, but as mentioned above, when there was obviously too much sea weed, the politicians quickly built an effective sewer sytem. I hear though that there, in the 60s, your engineers deodorized the tributaries to get rid of the stench. That sounds like a bad kool-aid commercial. I am sure you are surrounded by sewer systems now, right? And the industries have taken control of the problems they created, and towns see the value of a healthy water body for their citizens to enjoy?
So, there is progress, and some will with politicans and some environmental standards, but it seems like your people are not fully aware of all the issues surrounding you. That is scary. Are the people not proud? Are they not aware? I feel like the Queen compared to you, although you live near the Queen City! My people want the best for me. Do your people not realize that construction is bad, fertilizers and pesticides kill you? Too many boats make you look ugly? Power plants and their dangerous activitity are an acute threat? Our habits of consuming and disposing of medications a direct danger to us and the wildlife which is supposed to support our ecosystem?
Is it true you also have some grass roots professionals going beyond their duty and pay check to sample your water quality for any potential alarming danger? Like that is a drop of water on a hot stone. Who are these people? They would be my BFFs.
Hey, there is so much to talk about!
Let us form a sisterhood - you and I and let's ask Lake Mamphermagog in Canada too!
Warm regards
Woerthersee, Carinthia, Austria
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