stop the dam and damn the pass

Those insidious folks who for years have labored to bring you a dastardly thing known as the Yellow River Dam...

(background: in the panhandle of Florida, under the auspices of providing clean drinking water, neveryoumind that the folks at the water management district say we are fine wayyy into the future, and neveryoumind that this will drown 10,000 acres of undeveloped natural habitat currently filled with everything from gators and bears to coyotes and deer to opossums, skunks and snakes... don't even dare think for a moment that this new 10,000 acre lake surrounded by private land, instead of a floodplain owned by the water folks, would all be sold off to the highest bidder and ringed with expensive private waterfront homes... what is now a quiet, clean and clear natural river will become a stagnant polluted lake filled with waverunners driven by drunks crasking into docks... BUT there is a positive side here...

The folks a bit south of here are looking to open a pass in a barrier island... intellectuals they are not... they merely want to increase the value of their land at taxpayer's expense and also save the trouble of having to drive around the 52 mile long island they never noticed was there in the first place when they bought their mainland lots... said pass having existed for only 2 and 1/2 months after being dug when it was ceremoniously closed off by an irate god who must have considered that one of his finest creations (he was now doubting that too) had spent tooo much time in the sun and consumed toooo much modified grape... but lo and behold these silly fools wish to reopen the 'pass that never really was' at poor innocent little navarre florida... you may heard of navarre... hurricane opal flattened it... then hurricane ivan came by and did a repeat... followed by hurricane george... but it only flattened the buildings on the island... damage was limited more to roofs on the mainland... not to worry, because...

opening the pass will change all that... the barrier that protects the mainland from the gulf will now have a big wide welcome mat to go steamrolling into town... this is brilliant and consistent with the idea of self-removal from the gene pool...

so go ahead folks, and cut the island in half, invite a hurricane in... maybe your death will be quick because you can't even begin to imagine the problems you'll soon have with erosion and sand deposition should you alter nature's shape and plan for things... you'll get a bill to continually redredge the pass you wanted... that is if the folks on the mainland don't sur you first for endangering their lives...

so we let the storm surge in and it rolls inland along with all the rain from the hurricanes... overtops the dam on the yellow river and it all rushes back toward the gulf, only this time it takes docks and boats and drunken waverunner riders with it...

this isn't out of some classic Carl Hiaasen novel that you missed out on... this is what your friends and neighbors right here in the florida panhandle think are 'good ideas'...

we must continue to resist two of the stoooopidest ideas to come down the pike here and keep 'our world' just as beautiful and peaceful as the day we were born.

No to the damn dam... and No to the damn pass... pass on the dam... nature will most assuredly dam the pass... again... they'll never learn will they...