Has this info been sent to the media? If not, why not try.

REMEMBER WHEN THIS WAS THEIR ANSWER TO THE LOW LAKE?????? LAKE OKEECHOBEE BACKPUMPING FACT SHEET Lake Okeechobee has a surface area of 730 square miles and is the second largest freshwater lake wholly within the United States.  The Lake has been classified by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection as a Class I Drinking Water source, which requires strict standards allowing only small amounts of pollution.  The Lake is the sole source of drinking water for several small towns on the south rim of the Lake and one of the sources of drinking water for West Palm Beach, Fort Myers, and the entire Lower East Coast metropolitan area.  The region south of the Lake, known as the Everglades Agricultural Area ("EAA"), contains over a half million acres of former Everglades that have been diked and drained to make them suitable for urban and agricultural development. Most of the land is in sugar cane cultivation.  Three companies own 87% of the land within the EAA. One of those companies is the United States Sugar Corporation which owns 104,000 acres in the EAA, much of it in the area directly south of Lake Okeechobee.  Polluted water is pumped off the sugar cane fields and collected in large District-owned canals.  At the north ends of these canals, the District owns and operates three pumping stations, S-2, S-3, and S-4, which are built into the Herbert Hoover Dike that surrounds Lake Okeechobee.  Each of these pumping stations has either three or four very large pumps each powered by a diesel engine about four times the size of a semi trailer engine. When all the pumps in a pump station are operating, the discharge is equivalent to the flow of a medium size Florida river.  The flow from the pumps creates a highly visible "plume" of dark (sometimes even black) colored water that can reach nine miles out into Lake Okeechobee.  The plume contains high levels of nutrients (phosphorus and nitrogen) and high levels of dissolved organic materials that come from agricultural and urban wastes.  One of the largest pump stations is within 2 and ½ miles of the drinking water intake of South Bay, one of the small towns on the south rim of the Lake that uses the Lake for drinking water.  Earthjustice brought this lawsuit against the South Florida Water Management District in 2002 on behalf of the Florida Wildlife Federation.  The case is a Clean Water Act "citizen suit" which sought a declaration from the court that the District had to obtain federal Clean Water Act "point source" permits for its pump station discharges.  As "point sources," the discharges from the pumping station must meet pollution limits applicable to Lake Okeechobee.  The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians entered the lawsuit in support of the environmental groups.  The United States Sugar Corporation entered the case in support of the District.  The Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers entered the case on the side of the polluters - the District and U.S. Sugar - in early 2005. This was the first occasion in the 33 year history of the EPA that it entered a water pollution case on the side of a polluter.  No EPA witness testified at the trial and no EPA witnesses were provided for depositions.  Florida Wildlife Federation argued that when the District collects and then moves water in a way that harms the receiving water body (here Lake Okeechobee) it is responsible for cleaning up the pollution in the same way a city is responsible for cleaning up sewage it collects in its sewage system before it discharges its wastewater.  On average, the S-2, S-3, and S-4 pumping stations discharge 32 billion gallons of water into Lake Okeechobee each year.  Today, on average, the pumps contribute the equivalent of 60,000 one hundred pound bags of phosphorus to the Lake each year.  Because of this excessive fertilization, the Lake now chronically suffers from toxic blue-green algae blooms, including one in 2005 that generated toxin levels in Lake Okeechobee 65 times greater than the World Health OrganizationÂs safe drinking water guidelines.  Blue-green algae toxins can affect the liver, nervous system and skin and have been linked to increases in liver cancer, chronic fatigue illness, skin rashes, abdominal cramps, nausea, diarrhea and vomiting, as well as deaths of dogs and cattle. The toxins are not removed by chlorination or boiling and algaecides (which kill the algae) result in the release of the toxins into the environment.  Phosphorus pollution levels in the Lake have risen continuously from about 40 parts per billion in 1960 to 240 parts per billion last year  an all time high. Phosphorus is a main ingredient in fertilizer and is an important component of animal waste and sewage.  The state and EPA have recently determined that the maximum allowable level of phosphorus pollution is 40 parts per billion.  In 1976, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection contended that backpumping into Lake Okeechobee from the pumping stations should be stopped. At trial, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection reversed position and sided with the District in contending that no Clean Water Act permit was necessary.  After the trial was completed but before a decision was issued, EPA proposed an administrative rule that would exempt all water transfers from permitting under the Clean Water Act. The South Florida Water Management District  the defendant in the backpumping case  explained that the rule is "expressly designed" for the backpumping lawsuit.  Thirteen states and the Canadian province of Manitoba filed comments in opposition to the proposed EPA rule as did over 50 national conservation organizations.  Earthjustice will take the EPA to court to challenge the legality of the new water transfers exemption rule when it is adopted by EPA. The theory of the case will be that EPA may not legally exempt any polluters from the Clean Water ActÂs permitting requirements.

Marshall, here's more on your west coast woes : 'Strange Things Happening' to Pacific Coast Marine Life By Terence Chea Associated Press posted: 01 August 2005 04:43 pm ET SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Marine biologists are seeing mysterious and disturbing things along the Pacific Coast this year: higher water temperatures, plummeting catches of fish, lots of dead birds on the beaches, and perhaps most worrisome, very little plankton -- the tiny organisms that are a vital link in the ocean food chain. Is this just one freak year? Or is this global warming? Few scientists are willing to blame global warming, the theory that carbon dioxide and other manmade emissions are trapping heat in the Earth's atmosphere and causing a worldwide rise in temperatures. Yet few are willing to rule it out. "There are strange things happening, but we don't really understand how all the pieces fit together,'' said Jane Lubchenco, a zoologist and climate change expert at Oregon State University. "It's hard to say whether any single event is just an anomaly or a real indication of something serious happening.'' Scientists say things could very well swing back to normal next year. But if the phenomenon proves to be long-lasting, the consequences could be serious for birds, fish and other wildlife. This much is known: From California to British Columbia, unusual weather patterns have disrupted the marine ecosystem. Normally, in the spring and summer, winds blow south along the Pacific Coast and push warmer surface waters away from shore. That allows colder, nutrient-rich water to well up from the bottom of the sea and feed microscopic plants called phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are then eaten by zooplankton, tiny marine animals that include shrimp-like crustaceans called krill. Zooplankton, in turn, are eaten by seabirds and by fish and marine mammals ranging from sardines to whales. But this year, the winds have been unusually weak, failing to generate much upwelling and reducing the amount of phytoplankton. Off Oregon, for example, the waters near the shore are 5 to 7 degrees warmer than normal and have yielded about one-fourth the usual amount of phytoplankton, said Bill Peterson, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Newport, Ore. "The bottom has fallen out of the coastal food chain, and there's just not enough food out there,'' said Julia Parrish, a seabird ecologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. Seabirds are clearly distressed. On the Farallon Islands west of San Francisco, researchers this spring noted a steep decrease in nesting cormorants and a 90 percent drop in Cassin's auklets -- the worst in more than 35 years of monitoring. On Washington state's Tatoosh Island, common murres -- a species so sensitive to disruptions that scientists consider it a harbinger of ecological change -- started breeding nearly a month late. It was the longest delay in 15 years of monitoring. Researchers have also reported a sharp increase in dead birds washing up in California, Oregon and Washington. Along Monterey Bay in Central California, there are four times the usual number of dead seabirds, said Hannah Nevins, a scientist at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. "Basically, they're not finding enough food, and they use up the energy that's stored in their muscles, liver and body fat,'' Nevins said. Fish appear to be feeling the effects, too. NOAA found a 20 percent to 30 percent drop in juvenile salmon off the coasts of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia in June and July, compared with the average over the previous six years. And researchers counted the lowest number of juvenile rockfish in more than 20 years of monitoring in Central and Northern California. Fewer than 100 were caught between San Luis Obispo and Fort Bragg this year, compared with several thousand last year. Scientists have seen some of these strange happenings before during El Nino years, when higher water surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific alter weather patterns worldwide. But the West Coast has not had El Nino conditions this year. As for the possibility that this is being caused by global warming, scientists are not so sure, since climate change is believed to be a gradual process, and what is happening this year is relatively sudden. But "if we did see this next year, the notion that global warming plays a role in this carries more weight,'' said Nathan Mantua, a climate expert at the University of Washington in Seattle.

I am glad to hear about that. I had some given to me years ago when they first came out. I tried it to shower with but didn't like it. Well I started having a problem with my ear. My doctor got his scope and was doing a through examination of my ears. He said well this is the strangest thing. You have these tiny tiny blue balls way down in your ear canal. What could it be. We had no idea. So he flushed them multiple times but some were stuck. I was wondering what on earth it could be. The next day in the shower I was looking right at the bottle in the shower rack. And bam I realized that the tiny blue balls were those dang scrubbing beads. I called my doctor, who was also my neighbor and friend, and told him what it was. He was astounded. I threw that bottle in the trash. He said he didn't see how that could be good at all, no telling what they can do to the ear drum. So if you are using the stuff be aware that you probably have them down in your ears.