June 1, 2010
Dear Diary,
Sometimes I feel like no one knows that I exist. People walk right past me all day long but no one ever stops to say hello. I bet that if you asked the people living on my street, not one of them would even be able to tell you how to get to my place. Do they think that the water just magically disappears from the street when it rains? If it weren’t for me, there would be water halfway up their car tires and probably some wet basements too.
June 2, 2010
Dear Dairy,
I love a nice light rain in the morning because it helps me to stay in shape. You should see some of the storm sewers in Minneapolis and St. Paul – talk about an obesity epidemic! Some of them are 12 feet or more in diameter and it seems like they eat everything. Plastic bags, dog poop, cigarette butts, grass and leaves – they’ll devour anything that fits in their mouths. The worst part is that they don’t clean-up after themselves either. All of that junk just goes spewing out into the Mississippi River where it probably lands on some poor fish’s head. Some people think those guys go to a treatment facility, but they’re much too lazy. Instead, they take the most direct route from the street to the river and dump everything as soon as they can after it rains. What a bunch of litterbugs!
June 3, 2010
Dear Diary,
The best part about being a storm sewer is that I have waterfront property. I’m on this nice little lake out in the ‘burbs where I see tons of wildlife. The egrets are back from down south and they’ve been fishing in the reedy areas and this spring a painted turtle built a nest right in my backyard. On summer evenings when the bugs come out I can see bats and swallows swooping over the water to catch their dinners and lately I’ve been hearing a barred owl hooting from the woods nearby.
I wish I could do more to keep the lake clean, but it’s hard when some of my neighbors blow their grass clippings into the street. I know they want to keep the water clean too, but they don’t realize that when it rains, all of those clippings get washed onto my property and then I have no choice but to unload them into the lake. Then, the grass starts to decompose in the water and the next thing you know, smelly green algae is growing all over the place.
Even worse is when people spill fertilizer or pesticides on their driveways and sidewalks and then don’t sweep it up. Don’t even talk to me about dog poop in the street…down the hatch it all goes! If it’s on the street today, it’s in the lake tomorrow.
June 4, 2010
Dear Diary,
I saw the cutest commercial the other day. There were all these little yellow rubber duckies floating down a street and into a storm drain before popping out into a nearby stream. The announcer said that if stormwater were rubber ducks it wouldn’t pollute local lakes, streams and rivers. Of course, stormwater isn’t rubber ducks, so therein lies the problem. I think that the clip is on-line, so I might have to send my neighbors a note to check it out.
Well diary, the weatherman is forecasting rain for the weekend, so I should tidy up a bit around here. I’ll write again when I have the chance.
East Metro Water 