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| Post Number: 1
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GEOKARJO 
Google This!!!
Group: Members
Posts: 7799
Joined: Aug. 2003
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Posted on: Jan. 29 2004,3:56 pm |
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~ Now that we have the Shell Rock River Watershed District board developing a plan to manage Albert Lea Lake (as well as the watershed and other lakes within it) along with a city effort to consider initiating a sales tax to pay for the most expensive component of that plan - dredging (to the tune of 20 to 40 million dollars) there are those that:are getting very excited about what promises to be a lucrative economic future for Albert Lea. A main emphasis is waterfront development perhaps using the old Farmland site as a focal point. Of course dredging is crucial for any large scale recreational power boating and other attendant development on the lake - deeper water presumed to be the condition needed to create the usual kind of water recreation tourist 'Mecca' envisioned by the chambers And even if Albert Lea Lake never gets any cleaner by being dredged than Fountain Lake it can still be used and developed like Fountain Lake for fishing, swinmiing, boating and housing development. This can mean millions of dollars for our community, albeit mostly for the banks, insurance companies and real estate speculators.
With this exciting prospect in mind and in that we have an opportunity as a community to brainstorm and formulate a vision of how best to exploit our water resources and advance economic prosperity for our community let me lend some ideas to this endeavor - ideas I think to be consistent with both what the watershed board lake plan can be expected to accomplish for the environment, and what I think community economic leaders like the Chamber, Greater Jobs, Destination Albert lea, the 'Collaborative' and the Convention and Visitors Bureau people would find attractive from their perspective and vision of how to present our community to prospective investors and shoppors. I have in mind a grand theme park to conceptualize and manifestly define our image and future as a community - call it CARP WORLD.
In that dredging will ensure (by all credible natural resource managers assessments) that we will never be able. to significantly control the carp popiflation in Albert Lea Lake - dig it will never be ecologically restored or 'cleaned' big perpetually dominated by carp activity, hirbidity and algae growth, preventing the establishment of aquatic vegetation necessary for sustaining any balanced fishery or diverse wildlife habitat or clear water - the way left to make the most of this 'asset' is to accept and promote the carp. Our claim to fame and fortme may be to become the carp capital of the world - Mm what would otherwise be a monument to our enviromental insensitivity, ignorance and stupidity into a profitable economic boom, with only a few tens of millions of dollars more 'invested than it would have taken otherwise to actually 'clean up' the lake and restore its ecology.
Let me just enumerate some the exciting possibilities in this regard. Think of it as a summer Carp Days, carp fest and carnival to pale the Big Island Rendezvous featuring any number of gala events, activities and contests. Let's just name a few: carp fishing contests, carp cleaning contest carp cooking contest carp eating contest carp races, carp rodeo (cut, bulldog and corral carp), vat of carp wrestling, throw ball and dunk local government officials and Chamber business reps into vat of carp, carp photo contest 'Carp 'in the Park' art contest, carp chain saw sculpture contest look-a-like carp contest, carp kissing contest carp songs, poetry, dance and slogan contests - can you 'do the carp' or 'dancing with carp', or get the 'carp can do spirit', etc., Miss Carp Days pageant, Carp Days parade with carp theme floats contest carp-go-round type. rides for the kids and Charlie Carp mascot for photo ops, carp essay contest on how the noble carp has brought our community together in prosperity - get the school kids involved. And, think of the concessions and merchandising opportunities, paraphernalia and carp themed shops and restaurants - carp burgers, carp and chips, Carp on a stick, Carp roll-ups, canned carp, even smoked carp, carp T-shirts, carp calendars, carp colfee mugs, 'jewelry, towels, pennants, inflatable carp water toys, carp post cards. ( How about a carp industry, carp farming and a processing plant at some point?)
Imagine our Carp World theme park waterfront development including a carp aquarium and interpreitive center where people can learn all about carp and the native aquatic habitats carp have displaced and degraded along with displays showing examples of native species and habitats that once thirved in the lake or are still marginally surviving in spite of our promotion of the carp - explaining the necessity of this trade-off in the interest of the economic welfare of the community. Show what a natural clean native prairie lake could have been like, except for the carp, had we actually restored its ecology and bio-diversity instead of dredging it to accommodate boating recreation and commercial development - had we not opted 'instead for our carp theme. Show how we sustain the carp by dredging and aeration allowing them to survive the winters of low water and oxygen, and how the carp help keep the 'weeds' out of the lake. let's not forget the carp tour boat either, like the Pelican Breeze, but we could call it Carp Tales with a tour guide telling the wonderful story of carp, about their habits and dynamic interaction with the native environment and what they've done for our communuity. Explain how the carp has become our hero instead of our villain - our 'hidden treasure'. And we must have a huge carp statue like the walleye on Mille Lacs Lake for families to take their picture in front of so they can cherish forever their memory of Carp World and 'destination Albert Lea'.
We may want to establish a Friends of Carp Club or committee which could be responsible for organizing, coordinating and promoting Carp Days activities and the Carp World theme park And, think of the ways CARP might be used as an acronym to represent our respect and indebtedness to this noble fish, this economic lifesaver - such as, Community Action for Real Progress, or Citizens Are Rallying for Progress, or Carp Allure Reaps Profits.
The new Aqua 500 initiative by Greater Jobs that will be looking for donors toward the purchasing of a dredge directly demonstrates the spirit of such an ambitious project as I've just tried to illustrate. To have that image, that symbol of our purpose and resolve - this dredge - visibly positioned on the lake to monumentally and unmistakably indicate the direction we are determined to take - "Albert Lea's quest to utilize our assets" as the Aqua 500 slogan states - will encourage investors and clearly point the way our comnumity economic leaders, with the help of the watershed district board and local government officials, have decided to take us for our own good.
So let"s get into the community (carp cando) spirit support the take plan and turn a fiasco into an opportunity. Let's prostitute ourselves, our integrity, and our natural resource heritage to the imperatives of the market and the god of duplicity, greed and special interest economic expediency.
Mike Kelly, Citizens Against Ridiculous Policy (CARP)
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Sparky
Unregistered
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Posted on: Jan. 29 2004,4:06 pm |
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George...
You are either on to something or you are on something.
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| Post Number: 3
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CARP Lover
Unregistered
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Posted on: Jan. 29 2004,4:10 pm |
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That is the best thing I have read on here in a long time.
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| Post Number: 4
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cwolff
Group: Members
Posts: 265
Joined: Aug. 2003
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Posted on: Jan. 29 2004,7:00 pm |
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"Ladies and gentlemen, look out your starboard side and you will see the backs of over ten thousand carp spawning near the shore, and please do not take any pictures, because you could scare them off of their spawning beds."
After the lake is dredged and the carp are over populating, you need to be careful with the resilting of the lake. One should monitor the depth of the lake, and when the silt depth threatens the water depth and the chance that the lake could freeze out, you then need to raise the weir height of the dam to increase water depth, so that you will not take a chance of freezing and killing any jumbos (big carp).
At Heron Lake, we have been successful at maintaining a static water level to prevent carp from freezing out, and more importantly we prevent vegetation from flourishing. By gosh, if we would remove the dam and let Mother Nature decide when to raise and lower water levels, then who knows how much vegetation we would have with the shoreline exposed and the compaction of sediments, while exposing seeds to germinate. We cannot have that, but we do need to protect and save the carp.
If we would let the vegetation fourish, why the vegetation could act like a filtration system by filtering out sediments, pollutants, and nutrients, and provide important habitat for fish and wildlife. But this may not be good for the carp, and we do not take the chance in Heron Lake, because carp are king, and without carp, how could the DNR justify their jobs. If the DNR could not fight the carp battle each year, then their jobs may be on the line. So, if the DNR can keep the carp populations up, then they keep their jobs.
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Montyman
Group: Members
Posts: 421
Joined: Dec. 2003
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Posted on: Jan. 29 2004,7:40 pm |
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We all need to take a good look at the 'scale' (carp or other) of what the city/county/watershed board propose to do with al lake.
There is already alot of wildlife and a fishery inplace. Mother nature made it, not a bunch of dreamers, realtors, planners, or boards/councils.
You can't take a eutropic lake like that and do anything except ruin the state it's in now.
It may not seem to be, but it is fragile, and a bunch of dopes on a board won't do anything if they dredge except spend more of our money.
If you were to dredge 10% of the lake an average of 10 feet deeper (assuming that the lake covers a total of 1300 acres), you would need to move about 2.1 million cubic yards of inplace material. That's not much progress for alot of money. I say clean up the watershed upstream of the lake as much as possible, and leave the lake and the way ma nature made it the same as it is.
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Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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| Post Number: 6
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Jesus Juice
Group: Members
Posts: 107
Joined: Jan. 2004
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Posted on: Jan. 30 2004,12:02 pm |
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fill up the lakes with Asian carp, now that would be something cool to see.
-JJ
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http://www.mankatochat.com
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