The Observation Deck

Hi,
Living on Lake Erie gives us access to an amazing resource. Lake Erie is a great place for people to enjoy various forms of water recreation. It is also home to may types of animals, birds and fish.

I usually hear this brought up as a concern whenever there is a discussion on placing windmills out on the Lake where nature provides one of the best sources of constant wind in the nation. Usually to concern is for birds. New windmills are designed to minimize the danger to birds.

But another factor to consider is the daily damage done by continuing to use existing methods of electric generation.

"To catch and then eat fish, we need a license, and there are rules and penalities that trigger when more than six walleye and 25 perch are caught in a day," said Sandy Bihn, director of the Western Lake Erie Waterkeeper Association, during a teleconference Monday. "(Company) studies show that 24,000 walleye and 12,000 various size (juvenile and larval) walleye and perch, on average, are killed every day. Yet First Energy pays nothing and does little to nothing to reduce the kills."

See: http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090303/METRO/903030374/1409/METRO

So the First Energy plant is Toledo kills 36,000 fish a day! It's a wonder anyone ever catches a fish in the Lake. As fishing is one of Ohio's tourist attractions, we must be better guardians of this precious treasure.

PS I think perhaps even a more important issue is to get BP to stop polluting the Great Lakes with mercury. But fixing both issues would do amazing things for fishing in Lake Erie. Perhaps then people could even consider eating the fish they catch without worrying about mercury poisioning.

when I was a kid the Hot Waters Marina in Lorain was a popular place to fish. the last time I was there it looked like the edge of a ghost town.

I've been reading a book called "Auto-mania" by Tom McCarthy. During the 1950s more stringent environmental research was just beginning to pick up. some researchers took a pail of water from the Rouge river. within minutes it had dissolved the bottom of the bucket. it ruined the experiment. The Rouge river emptied into the Detroit river, which drains into Lake Erie. Today's pollution is pretty lightweight.

China's turned itself into a toxic waste dump making our disposeable goods. when being scouted as a potential Olympics sight, they had to spraypaint the ground green, because it was covered with dead turf and dead soil.