L2D2's Opera Odyssey

Carol, my understanding is that CLI and other interested parties have a lawsuit against a couple of industries there that have dumped toxic chemicals into the lake for a long time. There is a government warning out for people who live around Caddo, and people who fish there not to eat too many of the fish caught from the lake.

There is a condition called transmagnification whereby when the smallest fish/waterlife, eats, they absorb the mercury in their bodies. Then a bigger fish eats them, and the mercury level doubles. By the time man has eaten fish caught in a lake with mercury poisoning, the concentration of mercury in the muscles of those fish is very high. What was harmless to that first eater becomes very harmful indeed to the top of the food chain.

Glad you enjoyed this post. And I hope CLI and the Caddo Lake community is able to stop these greedy people from destroying one of the few remaining natural places on earth. If they succeed, it will destroy yet another way of life on the lake, just as it's life as an inland waterway of major trade importance was destroyed and just as the pearl trade was destroyed.

Most of the people who live on and around the lake make their living in tourist-related businesses----food, lodging, fishing guides, boat rental, etc.

It's terrible how man dirties up their own environment, Dare. I've stated before and I say again that man is the only animal on the planet who craps in his own nest. Other members of the animal kingdom go away from their living quarters to do their business. I've seen for myself how a mother bird cleans baby bird poop from their nest and deposits it elsewhere. Where is the brain that God gave man? You would think we'd have at least as much instinct to preserve and protect our "living quarters"as the lowliest of animals.

Thank you Angeliki. I finished it about 4 a.m. This one gave me problems because there is so much to write about the subject and it was hard to narrow it down.

I find it wonderful that P2 plays his role in preserving Caddo Lake. He is such a special guy. His place is beautiful. Most of the homes on caddo are tucked away in little coves and bayous and don't detract from the beauty of the lake.

I'll be writing one more post in this series. It won't focus on Caddo Lake, but will be about a place affected by what happened on Caddo.

BTW, several of the photos I used for the post were scrounged from P2 with his permission. The photos of the lake flowers are his, the owl on the tip of the branch, and some others. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember all the ones that were his when I put this together.

P2, thanks for the use of several of your photos, whichever they are!

Chuck, I hate to tell you this, but bottled water is not pure water. They get it from lakes and rivers and taps of city water.

Pertaining to this subject of bottled water, Ozarka bottled water has a facility on Lake Hawkins, a beautiful little lake several miles from here near Hawkins, Tx. I never thought about it, but now that I know how much damage they can cause, I want to investigate and check out the health of the lake since they started operations a few years ago. I'm anxious that Lake Hawkins will become sterile. I caught my first bass in Lake Hawkins and fished and camped there many times. I would hate to find out that it is being ruined because of bottled water. People are idiots. They can go to their water tap and get the same quality water that they are getting out of those bottles. That has been proven time and time again, and yet, these companies have so conditioned people's brains to believe that bottled water is superior to what I get out of my tap, that the facts will probably never register on their mind-controlled brains.

Sorry. I thought about you when I posted this, but I wanted to do the subject justice. You won't believe how much I cut out and threw on the editing room floor! I had probably 30 more photos of wildlife on the lake.

Did you get my comment about Image Ready? Do you know how to use it?

Well, may not be necessary. I tried to access it a few minutes ago but it said there was an error and it couldn't be fully loaded. Either I didn't get all the pieces, or there's another exe file running around that I've missed.

Already redone it and done another one too. Practicing.

So far I'm enjoying this Elements.

Thank you Star. Yes, it is an interesting place. To me, it's like entering some time warp to the ancient past. It looks to me the way I think things would have looked when the earth was young. Looks like a lot of the scenes you'd see in a scifi movie where the players are thrown back in time.

Just the feeling I get when I look at the photos.

Something that I haven't mentioned in my posts---Longhorn Ordinance facility used to be located in that area. They made missiles or something to do with military armament. It was shut down in the 70s or 80s, and that place is now being used for The Wetlands Center and National Wildlife Refuge facilities.

History:

LONGHORN ARMY AMMUNITION PLANT. The Longhorn Army Ammunition Plant, also called the Longhorn Ordnance Works, is a facility for the production of munitions located on a 10,000-acre site beside Caddo Lake at Karnack, Harrison County. In December 1941 the Monsanto Chemical Company selected the site for a facility for the manufacture of TNT, and the company began operation of the $22.5 million plant on October 18, 1942. By August 15, 1945, the plant had turned out 414,805,500 pounds of TNT. The facility closed sometime in November 1945 and remained on standby until February 1, 1952, when it was reopened; it subsequently produced munitions and a variety of pyrotechnic devices under the management of the Universal Match Corporation until 1956. The Thiokol Chemical Corporation, awarded a contract in 1952 for producing solid-fuel rocket motors for the army, built a facility at Longhorn for that purpose between 1953 and 1955. Rocket motors of various kinds were produced at Longhorn until early 1971. The Vietnam War brought an increased demand for pyrotechnic devices, and the Longhorn plant resumed production of such items as flares and ground signals in the 1960s. In 1987 the plant continued to manufacture illuminating devices for the army under the direction of Thiokol, Incorporated, and employed some 962 workers. In 1989 LAAP was one of the sites selected to fire and destroy Pershing IA and II missiles under the terms of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union, a project completed in 1991.

It is being put to constructive use now.

Chuck, yes I know the apostrophe is missing. Last night when I made that header, my keyboard would NOT put an apostrophe in the text----it kept putting a question mark. I am pretty sure there was a crumb or piece of fuzz or something that was sticking the ? key. Anyway, later after I had already fixed this up, the apostrophe started working, but I didn't want to go back and edit it. Haven't quite got the hang of editing text in the header yet. Sounds simple but isn't when I start trying to do it.

Come and go as often as you like angeliki. Hope you get something out of the post besides tired eyes.

It's a terrible weed Chuck. Most of the things that would eat it are undesirable intruders into the lake. They are constantly fighting the stuff. It can tangle up a boat motor and stop it. Probably could break a trolling motor. I'll see if I can find a picture of the stuff and post it here.

There you go Chuck. Seems the Louisiana side isn't doing much to fight this because they are directing all their resources to Katrina aftermath. Texas is trying to hold the line on our side, but the weed seems to be winning. It smothers all life beneath it by taking all the oxygen out of the water.

Air boats, Chuck, although mostly here we call them Swamp Buggies.

Problem is, if they smother all life beneath them, that means no fishing, so the lake loses all it's fishing guides who lose their living; the folks who cater to the fishers lose their living. No swimming in such a mess---the whole lake would die, including the cypress trees probably. The beavers would be gone, all the birds from the wetlands because there would be no fish, turtles, etc. for them to eat. Bad stuff.

Because their markings, looks, are rough like a gator and their head has big gaping jaws that you wouldn't want to latch on to any part of your anatomy.

I'll bet you wouldn't go swimming in any lake would you? Might be bacteria and funguses there. http://files.myopera.com/Tamil/Smilies/Tease.gif -

That's kind of how I saw it. OCD.

There is another plant that has a lawsuit against them for dumping waste for years into Caddo, but I just vaguely registered it when I read it in my research, and I've forgotten who the company was, or what they dumped. I remember Longhorn Ammunition plant, I remember all the hoopla when it closed because it put about 1000 people out of work. In fact I knew a couple people who worked there.

I'm glad it is now being used for good things.

Thank you Olga. Hope you enjoyed the post.

There you are P2. Thank you for the very nice comment. I'm so glad you approve. Always afraid I'll get something wrong when I do these information posts. I do a lot of research, but you know info online isn't always exactly accurate. Just out of curiosity---which dates did I have wrong?

Am waiting for your new post about your latest trip. I take it you are home now? Doesn't coming home feel good!

Chuck, you are nattering. Natter, natter. Alligator snapping bedbugs would indeed be a problem. It is fortunate, then, that they are so small. And I surely hope P2 doesn't bring bedbugs from any of his travels back to Louisiana----they might cross the lake into Texas, and that just won't do.

I need to hook P2 up with that article on bedbugs by Debplatt.