So what lurks in Lake Apopka and the Ocklawaha River Valley
is also in us all?
By
Joseph Siry
Up
and down the spine of Florida far from the beach crowds unseen from the
destination resorts runs a toxic round river of neglect constrained to flow
relentlessly unless we reverse the damages it carries by ingrained racism, and
fragmented knowledge, inexcusably poor record keeping, and the perpetuation of
the game that commonizes costs and privatizes profit.
The site of a serious pollution of the wetlands, lakeshore birds
and farmworkers by pesticides used to grow vegetables.
[JVS 2008]
The
river is round because it flows back onto itself.
After it flows from the circuits of farms and fields, orchards and parks into
our bodies and back through our wastewater treatment into the stream we call
life is this Òtotal minimum daily flowsÓ of death. It is not from the dumps
alone, or the over-drafted groundwater used to sell bottled water at exorbitant
prices to a tourist economy, or from nitrogen and carbon pollution from cars
and coal fueled electricity plants. These are bad enough, but the poisons
spread on our foods to kill insects, the endocrine damaging chemicals, and the
antibiotics fed to our meat supplies are carried by this unseen river, stored
in your fat cells, incorporated into unborn fetuses, and are residing in your
liver and kidneys. The river flows because we are uneducated about what it
carries and how it ties the most polluted valley in the nation and into the
very fabric of a fraying society through its field hands, into the food we
consume and into our bodies.
Jeffersonian
democracy has been swept away by a flood of this round riverÕs
toxins, persistent organic pollution and gender bending chemicals. Rational
science has been buried in the polluted silt of this actual river into a
silence, bearing witness –yet never accusing—to the silent yet
growing number of still birthÕs, spontaneous abortions and kidney failures
among the farm worker families exposed to the chemicals used in industrial
agriculture. These Òphosphate fed foods feedÓ us, the foliage from nurseries
decorate our offices, the animals we eat depress our immune systems because
they are fed so much antibiotic laced food. But the real toxicity is not in the
accumulating nitrogen and phosphorus in the Ocklawaha River, or the toxic soup
that is also dissolved in the Fenholloway River on the northwest, Gulf coast.
The toxicity that is most onerous is that which infects our social services and
political responses to what is really a challenging ethical test. We have
failed not our environment, but our neighbors and ourselves. We have let people
suffer and die, because of a greater value, due to a lack of commitment from
decision makers and a political system that responds to the needs of the few at
the cost to the public and the commons.
Toxic
Round River has flowed so long through the veins
of the public that we donÕt recognize the symptoms and the diagnosis goes
unheard by decision makers who apply aspirin to the symptoms without detecting
the hidden causes. If we only made manufacturers fully responsible for their
waste, instead of the public, we might begin to see the enormity of cleaning up
the lives of people through which round river deposits its toxins into the very
reproductive, productive, and responsive parts of our bodies, our souls, and
our communities.
Together we can solve this problem if we begin to listen to
the people in whose bodies these toxins lurk, only to strike them down like some
silently stalking agent orange defoliating the flower of our future – our
children, nephews, nieces and citrus workers. Let us build a coalition to
restore Round River. Take it back from a devilÕs brew and turn it into the
drug-free river it could be if only we care to act, speak and document its
ongoing demise.
12-2-11
611 words