Shamelessness is as good an explanation as any.
But we have two issues before us, masquerading disingenuously as one, according to Eric Staats of the Naples Daily News, whose sad tale is of a city struggling to make ends meet and forced to ignore its messy freshwater lakes in order to put its energy and limited resources into . . . what exactly?
Basically into continuing to ignore Naples Bay is what I get from reading his story.
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2010/oct/05/city-plan-change-naples-bay-cleanup-lake-pollution/
The city's lakes are unquestionably an aesthetic resource for those who live near them, and it's understandable that those who look out for those issues – property value, reputation, charm and beauty – closest to a realtor's heart would be upset about abandoning plans to make them preen like something on Fantasy Island. But they function mainly as stormwater collectors. They are not, most of them anyway, natural waterways. They are holes in the ground left when fill needed to raise building levels was removed. Due to the enthusiastic application of fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides and herbicides in pursuit of picture-perfect lawns over the years, they no doubt have been transformed into devilishly toxic lagoons. The green crown of algae they wear befits their less-than-regal status.
The city's egregious decision to conflate the cosmetic and aesthetic concerns that characterize the "health" of the former borrow pits with the very real and very critical threat to the health of Naples Bay was just sad. Stripping them apart is a sane and defensible, although hardly popular, remedy for helping a 'hood of multimillion-dollar homes get through hard times.
The significant threats to Naples Bay, and its deterioration as a functioning estuary capable of rejuvenating the area's marine life – shrimp, oysters, snook and untold millions of squiggly little things no one worries about (much like, say, the enzymes one's healthy glands produce) until they're gone – was ably documented in 1979. 1979. Thirty-one years ago.
Anyone interested in reviewing that hopeful but ultimately sorry chapter in the city's history can check the archives at http://elnuestros.blogspot.com/2010/03/well-if-all-youre-doing-is-flushing.html
To hear John Sorey, who might be a thoroughly decent and well-intended man (I don't know him) today utter such a vacuous comment as "It was trying to be more realistic. . . " is, again, just sad. He sits on the board that continues to flood the bay with fresh water that is fully as harmful as massive quantities of fresh water injected into a human vein would be.
If the problem can't be fixed without destroying Golden Gate as we know it, he should be honest enough to say that. Asking for more time to afford a solution during the bleak darkness following the greatest real estate boom many of us are likely to witness here is, again, just sad.
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