I have been following the Sweetwater Alliance's bid to get a piece of prime Duluth real estate dedicated for use as a "Living Water Garden". Jill Jacoby of the the Sweetwater Alliance has long promoted this project as a way to purify water before it enters the Lake Superior basin. The problem is, the plan has always been a plan to pump water out of the St. Louis Bay, through the garden, then back into the bay.
The "Living Water Garden" has been touted as an educational project and represented as legitimate science. Any Kindergarten student will tell you, pumping fresh water through a swamp is not going to make it any cleaner. Further, Jill Jacoby makes outrageous claims that this will in-fact, contribute to cleaner water by reducing salinity in St. Louis Bay.
The fact that our City Council has given away a half acre of the most valuable property in Duluth, approved funding for the design of this ridiculous project and discussed it like it is a legitimate use of public funds, time or energy, demonstrates the complete and utter stupidity and flagrant pandering to the leftist, extreme of Duluth. This, along with so many other completely stupid, nutty projects is why Duluth is and will continue to be a laughing stock and the butt of so many jokes State and Nationwide.
This land is DEDA property and it's intended purpose is economic development. Here is the list of economic development proposals approved for that property:
1. Living Water Garden
2. To Be Announced
3. To Be Announced
If this had been property specifically earmarked for environmental protection and development was approved, there would be a firestorm of controversy, front page news articles damning the Council for approving it and the developer building it. The Council would be figuratively hanged, drawn and quartered by the media and the left. The opposite has occurred; economic development property, specifically set aside for development, has instead been stolen from the tax roles and set aside for the construction of a fancy swamp. Where is the outrage?
How utterly ridiculous that we, as a City have been hijacked by a handful of starry-eyed, leftist nuts is an indication of how far out of the mainstream we truly are. In any other City facing the same challenges as Duluth, this project would have been laughed right out of City Hall. In Duluth, we embrace stupidity. We love a good waste of time, resources and public funds. Anybody who defends this project and the totally intellectually bankrupt notion that by pumping water out of the bay, running it through a swamp and pumping it back into the bay somehow contributes to our environment is hopelessly out of touch with the realities of science.
It's like saying, if we purify a bucket of water each day, we could purify the whole lake over time. Let's say this "Living Water Garden" successfully treats 1000 gallons of water each day (they have made no representations regarding how much water will be treated) , it will only take 1,095,890,411 years to run the contents of Lake Superior through it.
If you pull up the Sweetwater Alliance website, you will see pictures and verbiage that represents to the viewer that they will be treating storm water runoff. This is a bald-faced lie. The "Living Water Garden" will treat water that has already run into and mixed with the water from the St. Louis Bay. The St. Louis bay ebbs and flows with Lake Superior, the world's largest fresh water lake by area. Of course, that is irrelevant to Jill Jacoby and our City Council.
The only way the science is legitimate is if salinity equivalent to that which would naturally flow in from the street is present going in. Lacking this, it is nothing more than an expensive lie on prime property, using public funds for Junk Science. Will we ever get this City away from these ridiculous blunders? It is apparent that there is no recognition by our illustrious Council that we can no longer afford these distractions.
"Welcome to the Living Water Garden: This is an experiment in treating storm-water runoff, of course we don't really treat storm-water runoff, but we really needed to prevent development on this site and this is the only thing we could think of that would fit the bill."
Anyone who cannot see this as nothing more than a cynical attempt by a few extremists to grab the most valuable piece of property in Duluth, are blinded by their own loyalty to the fringe kooks running Duluth into oblivion.
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2 comments:
forget the fact that this entire project is junk science and nothing more than pie in the sky pap.....we've been getting lectured to by these people for years. we, the great unwashed, need to be shown the way...
a blogger on another site makes a great point; why in the world would we want to spend millions to expand the decc seating capacity and presumably draw bigger and more frequent acts to duluth, when we keep taking space away from the largest entertainment draw in the ports, the blues fest. as it is, the thousands who attend are packed into a few acres like sardines. now they'll be be able to witness a man made swamp in action as they trip over themselves. using this logic, when the decc expansion is complete, a portion of the venue should be set aside as a natural waterfall, maybe taking a few hundred seats away from the crowd capacity. but hey, nobody said a green arena was going to be an easy sell. revenue is one thing, re-education of the masses is another.
this all said, i fully expect this 'lesson in green living' to be up and running in a flash. after all, as a tax paying member of the unwashed, i live to be educated by this carnival side show we endure as a city council.
You are such a great writer hve you ever thought of becoming a famous writer! I think you should. I would read anything you write. You must be a hotty too. You should put a picture of yourself on this site!!!
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