What's Wrong With The River?
(River • Ecology)
It started last Wednesday with the turkey vultures.
Normally you might see a couple of pairs scouting for roadkill together. But here were a dozen roosting in a neighbor’s cottonwood tree. The next day there were 30.
Taking the kids to school on Friday, I glanced over at the trees between the city park a few houses down from ours and the river, and had to stop.
There had to be at least 200 buzzards in those trees.
On Friday evening we went down to the Brazos and noticed the water seemed fairly clear. Vultures were circling overhead in groups of 50 or so here, 50 a mile up in the sky, 50 downwind to the east. A lone dead catfish bobbed in the water at the foot of a willow.
By Saturday morning the water had turned noticeably green, and a large dead carp had washed two feet up a shallow bank, in a place that is normally about three feet under water. The river has been low for months, and water volume is way down.
This morning the water was noticeably greener than on Saturday, and I found two more dead catfish, another large dead carp and a dead drum within 20 yards of each other. Vultures had landed on a sandbar and were snacking on something that was probably disgusting.
At work for FortBendNow I found a local game warden who confirmed that golden algae has finally moved down river from the Waco-area reservoirs and, under ideal weather and dead-water conditions, is busy replacing oxygen with toxins that kill fish.
Golden algae likes sunny days, cool nights and fairly salty “fresh” water. The game warden told me the flow in the Brazos has pretty much been reduced to what’s coming out of water treatment plants – high-nitrogen, low oxygen “dead” water.
It’s just a theory, but I wonder if golden algae isn’t an environmental indicator, and hasn’t become more and more prevalent since the 1980s as the population increases around the Brazos and the water quality slides. Farm chemicals and cow poop in north Texas, salt and silt from sand and gravel operations in its mid section and more of both here in the lower Brazos basin probably will contribute to an increasingly polluted and lifeless river absent some quick and herculean environmental efforts, which I don’t see emanating from the likes of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality any decade soon.
→ B.Dunn, Feb 02, 2009, 09 15 pm
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The Upshot
(Ecology • Garden)
I’ve worked for some time toward a goal, on my little acre-minus of land here and in previous abodes, of being able to harvest fresh fruits and/or vegetables year-round, or as close to it as possible.
It always seemed a worthy pursuit in the past, because for a graying guy like me gardening provides exercise I wouldn’t get much of otherwise; and gardening helps one understand the inter-relationship of plants, critters and the elements; not to mention that home-grown produce and fruit provide a really healthy supplement to the diet.
Now, however, it appears that growing your own food may come very close to being a necessity.
Anyone who’s given it much thought probably concluded years ago that there are major inherent flaws in the U.S. system of agri-corp food processing and grocery store distribution.
Confirmation of those flaws hit home a year and a half ago, When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning after one person died and at least 49 others in 11 states got sick from a particularly impolite strain of E. coli bacteria. Suddenly, people would no more buy spinach for their salads than they would rat poison. I remember at the time that Fort Bend County environmental cops (and who knew there were such people?) busted a California truck driver who was caught dumping 100 or so boxes of spinach off a bridge near the San Barnard River.
Now it’s tomatoes. Wait – make that peppers
A couple dozen people in Texas and 75 or more nationwide have gotten food poisoning – in the form of Salmonella Saintpaul. The feds and state health officials are pointing to Roma and those big, round, hard, tasteless ‘maters sold in the grocery stores. No one’s died yet, but tomato sales have tanked at Kroger and HEB lately because, well, people by and large don’t like projectile vomiting a whole lot more than dying. The government now advises that it’s best not to eat raw tomatoes unless you’re picking them from your own garden.
And these are just a couple of the more highly publicized breaches in our food delivery system. The FDA alone posts notices on a dozen or more every month – not to mention what goes unreported behind the curtain or under the radar.
So if you want to guarantee yourself fruit and veggies that are free from pesticide residue and e. Coli, and picked and distributed to your dinner plate fresh and ripe, you either have to grow your own or find a grower you can trust at a farmers’ market.
Which is reason enough to take up gardening, but not the only reason.
Another major flaw in our food distribution system has been exposed by the fact that world oil producers can’t keep up with world oil demanders, and gasoline prices are headed for the clouds. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know when I say prices for meat, milk, bread and eggs seem to be paralleling gas prices. That’s because trucks full of food run on petroleum products.
In my opinion gas prices are going to rise more quickly over the next few years than they have over the last 12 months, taking food prices right along with them. We’re all going to suffer financially as a result, but those who can afford the land and time needed to put in a garden – along with maybe some chickens and a milk goat – won’t suffer as much.
We’re lucky here in southeast Texas, because we’re blessed with long (albeit hot) growing seasons and mild winters. But you can grow your own food – a lot of food – even in the North, if you plan for it.
→ B.Dunn, Jun 04, 2008, 07 36 pm
