I am ending this Blog segment on Stuart, Florida the same way it began - with a photograph of the shoreline along the St. Lucie River, just a short walk away from my sister and my condo. I took it the night before I returned to Denver, close to the same spot I took Tuesday's Blog photograph, only 24 years later. The sailboat owned by one of the complexes' residents, as well as the blue heron that used to hang out there, are long gone, but the river and the sunsets are still beautiful. A few months ago Stuart was in an uproar because the discharges sent into the river from Lake Okeechobee - courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers - had caused a huge algae bloom along the river. Lake Okeechobee is filled with pollutants from the sugar plantations near the lake, and this water was being sent down the St. Lucie to the ocean. Since the sugar plantation owners are so politically connected, the politicians in Florida until now have refused to stop the discharges. Now, however, due to national publicity, they are being forced to take action, and not even get any bribes for doing it. How sad.
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