[Think free or die]

Interesting report. This pattern of draining swamps and controlling the waterways could well apply to our SE Pennsylvania community. Our (somewhat wet) property backs up to a stream which has a couple of old dams just within 500 yards. There was once a mill downstream of us, and an adjacent road is named for it. Our property and the adjacent ones all have a high water table and an assortment of springs which are especially obvious in spring and early summer.

Within the township are several creeks and runs, all of which are somewhat flood-prone and eroded. Historically, there were both mills and limekilns in this area. I can certainly believe it was swampier once than it is now. (We still have the mosquitoes . . . )

[Does so]

No place got drained like Florida!

Today, the Army Corps of Engineers is undoing what it had previously done to the Kissimmee River. (They'd "channelized"—straightened—it.) Worse, State politics controls which direction Florida's polluted waters go.

To Lake Okeechobee, which is in trouble? Or to the ocean, obliterating many square miles of sea life?

Ten years ago, who would have imagined that Florida would run out of clean water? (And we still have mosquitoes...) :-\

BTW: How many of the settlers' marshes got drained by just "harvesting" the beavers that created the marshes in the first place?