Happy Earth Day From An Erstwhile Dam Builder Who Helped Save A Lake - Really!

Instead of writing a long blog post about Earth Day 2012 (#42!) I plan to go for a bike ride on this glorious, sunny day (two in a row!) in the rain-soaked Willamette Valley. But not before a short brain-dump.

I remember the first Earth Day in 1970. I was 21, about to graduate with a BS in Geology from the College of William and Mary. It was a great excuse for many (but not moi) to miss classes but I actually helped do something useful: build a dam. 

Build a dam? On Earth Day? Did we not get the message down there in the Colonial Capital of the Old Dominion? 

Runoff (I knew some hydrologic terms even then) from a construction site was dumping (I knew environmental lingo even then - 'dumping', not 'transporting') sediment into our beloved Lake Matoaka, hallowed site of many ancient and sacred rituals (annual 3.2 beer can regatta, etc.). Thomas Jefferson, he who founded The University but attended W&M, reputedly lost his virginity there every week or so, an event that was celebrated nightly by many reverent, tradition-conscious undergraduates and wayward faculty. 

W&M didn't have an engineering program, so dam construction was left to geologists. What, we were going to ask the physics majors? We'd still be arguing about strength of materials, charge density, and moments.  

So build we did.

My sed-strat classmates (I had none who would admit to being geomorphologists) protested our plans because they wanted to witness an event that normally took millennia to complete: formation of a delta. But led by Dr. Gerry Johnson, we won the day, constructed the dam (a replica of which is shown here), and saved our beloved waterway from premature infilling. 

There was much celebrating that evening at the lake. And much contamination the next day. Something for Earth Day 1971 to address.

And that's the truth (at least the part about building the dam).

Celebrate Earth Day! Every day! And Water Day, too!

Richard Nixon, who created the EPA, died on this day in 1994.

Now for some grading....

"A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking." - Jerry Seinfeld The Week, 27 April 2012 

Comments

[Michael]

Re: "A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking." - unfortunately the number of bookstores is going down by the day! It is becoming a rare species worldwide.