Too many people, too much pollution, serious loss of wetlands habitat, forests, wild plains. We've made leaps and bounds in improving water quality while destroying everything else close to it with development. Some serious big wins in the last fifty years though.  Lake Michigan, Lake Erie. Love canal anyone? I still feel like the commercial with Indian brave crying.

FM

Thanks for all of the replies everyone. Really appreciate it.

15 hours ago, Fishingmickey said:

Too many people, too much pollution, serious loss of wetlands habitat, forests, wild plains. We've made leaps and bounds in improving water quality while destroying everything else close to it with development. Some serious big wins in the last fifty years though.  Lake Michigan, Lake Erie. Love canal anyone? I still feel like the commercial with Indian brave crying.

FM

 

Me too, Mick, me too. 

In Oklahoma, we've largely passed on the job of water quality to private industry.  That does two things.  It allows the private industry to do their own water tests, which means they can test the water where and when they want.  And it largely removes liability for failure to meet minimum federal guidelines.  So we have a pretty serious pollution problem that no one talks about.  Especially since the oil industry pretty much runs our economy here, and it's political suicide to accuse the oil industry of anything other than being a fairy godmother that sprinkles money benevolently onto the people. 

 

On the plus side, virtually all our lakes a man-made.  So I guess we're not damaging nature, but rather infrastructure.  And most of our lakes aren't infested with housing.  It helps that a lot of them are out in the middle of nowhere, where jobs, grocery stores, and healthcare are scarce.  And a lot of our city lakes are owned by a city or county, which also owns the surrounding land.  Often times, this gets designated a state park.  The best ones are owned by a power company that just uses the water for cooling, and doesn't otherwise touch the water, but does allow people to use it.  The downside to all of this is, there are no docks to fish, and since they're water reservoirs or power plant lakes, care and quality of fish is not a concern.  So good luck finding any vegetation on most of them. 

 

But I can live with all of that.  What really gets my goat, is some yahoo, ameba brained, politician went and made white bass the state fish.  So now, every lake is infested with those aquatic cockroaches.  And anytime there's an event that hurts a fishery, the white bass take over. 

 

 

@Bankc: Thanks for the summary of Oklahoma. 

out here in california, we drained all our natural lakes.  then we built dams, simply to provide water and power.  then we wonder why our fishing reeks.....  now we're tearing down some dams in an attempt to restore the great fisheries that once existed here......... oh so long, ago. 

actually, only about a hundred years ago, i guess. 

There's a point of no return for some lakes and wetlands. I agree with the comments about how things are improving in certain areas while falling apart in others. Yet even while improving, they're all drastically a far cry from what the were a few years ago, steadily declining. In other words, they're just on a slower decline and will someday be overrun. I can only speak about places in my area, namely the everglades restoration projects and what they've gone through. They walled off these massive STA water retention areas south of Lake Okeechobee, tens of thousands of acres of natural wetlands, which channel all the harmful water into them. There, the water gets filtered by the vegetation, in this case absorbing high levels of phosphorus and other pollutants. Once filtered, the water is passed south into the everglades. The idea is pretty straightforward and has worked well for years but is gradually in need of newer systems. The SFWMD along with the Army Corp of Engineering has started construction on another one, a massive one, some 240,000 acre-feet that broke ground a about a year ago and is scheduled to be finished around 2030. They're doing this because the thousands of acres that they already have can't handle all the run-off. Those STA's are in fact dying, but dying by the hand of their creators! No more vegetation, which is the grand filter, so to speak, to clean things up. The vegetation gets so dense with all kinds of invasive undesirables, undesirables like hyacinth, hydrilla, and water lettuce, which leave them with no alternative but to nuke the daylights of them. Problem is, they nuke EVERYTHING. They kill off what they so badly need! So it's basically been a viscous cycle down in our neck of the woods. There's no clean-cut answers, ironically. All they can do is try. And all we can do is hope!

 

 

 

Like my fellow Tennesseans @roadwarrior and @Tennessee Boy posted, lakes and river here are way better than they used to be . They still kill the weeds which is ridiculous but industry not constantly polluting the water has greatly increased fish populations, imagine that. And no DDT and magically we have tons of eagles osprey and herons, who’d a thunk it??? 
 

shoreline development doesn’t hurt fishing here, just another dock to catch bass under. Trust me, the shores are EXTREMELY developed.

 

@A-Jay and @ol'crickety, I just spent a couple days driving across nearly all of Michigan and I don’t think there is any reason for concern , I think I saw 4 cars in 3 hours gunning it across the UP 😂 

8 hours ago, TnRiver46 said:

Like my fellow Tennesseans @roadwarrior and @Tennessee Boy posted, lakes and river here are way better than they used to be . They still kill the weeds which is ridiculous but industry not constantly polluting the water has greatly increased fish populations, imagine that. And no DDT and magically we have tons of eagles osprey and herons, who’d a think it??? 
 

shoreline development doesn’t hurt fishing here, just another dock to catch bass under. Trust me, the shores are EXTREMELY developed.

 

@A-Jay and @ol'crickety, I just spent a couple days driving across nearly all of Michigan and I don’t think there is any reason for concern , I think I saw 4 cars in 3 hours gunning it across the UP 😂 

3 cars ? Here that's traffic!

😅

A-Jay

@TnRiver46, I’ll take a bit of exception to your statement that shore line development doesn’t cause harm.  At least in my example, shoreline development is a direct cause of runoff causing the algae blooms from fertilizers and nitrates used on lawns, shoreline development caused the death of a swimmer from stray current off a boat lift.   Just sayin….

Texas Parks and Wildlife best in the nation. 

2 hours ago, TOXIC said:

@TnRiver46, I’ll take a bit of exception to your statement that shore line development doesn’t cause harm.  At least in my example, shoreline development is a direct cause of runoff causing the algae blooms from fertilizers and nitrates used on lawns, shoreline development caused the death of a swimmer from stray current off a boat lift.   Just sayin….

I said it doesnt hurt fishing here. Our water is fast , never seen an algae bloom in my life