Posted by Jay Lukkarila (205.188.209.103) on September 21, 2002 at 09:19:32:
Two weeks ago I checked on our artifical vernal pool at our Sterling Quarry, in Sterling CT,
and amazingly, the cycle has repeated itself. The water is completely gone. The 100 foot by 100 foot pond that had 10,000 tadpoles in this spring was empty. Deer tracks were in the black mud and the plantlife is still green along it's edges. I strolled the woods at the edge of the pond and came across a wood frog hopping along the matted floor. It's funny how us miners, the bad guys of the universe, can get the stone out of the ground so that eveyone can have driveways and roads and yet still promote the ecosystem. Everyone wants the products of a mine or the landfill to throw them back in, but no one wants either in their own backyard. Miners risk their lives, as the recent case in Pennsylvania, so that people can flip their switches and get electricty. "Exporting Your Pollution - Not in My Backyard" is one of my seminar topics - it's an eyeopener to most environmentalists. Anyone desiring a tour of this successful active artificial vernal pool in Sterling, Connecticut, can either call/fax my home business line, (413) 743 - 4211, or E mail me. You can get a tour of a small, two hundred year old, granite, building stone quarry to boot. You will see a stone built railroad bridge to nowhere which was constructed in 1857, before the civil war, with trees growing out of it. The bridge is not cared for by anyone, but it's better looking that most new bridges. Can you imagine Mass Highway building a maintenance free bridge that would last two hundred years?