Sunday, January 31, 2010

Sunday Photo(s)

You could call this a brief photographic essay on the importance of wetlands.

This is Panther Lake, which is located in Federal Way, Washington, back in late August:
Image credit: Cujo359

This is the same lake, from almost the same location, earlier this week:
Image credit: Cujo359

If it were from the exact same position, I'd have had to be wearing hip waders. That's the corner of a park bench in the lower right hand corner of this picture. I was standing in front of it when I took the pictures in August.

Needless to say, our summers are usually very dry, and our winters pretty wet. This has been a relatively dry winter, but with temperatures higher than normal, I expect we're seeing more runoff than usual.

Had it not been for a referendum that demanded municipalities do urban planning, there might have been houses in the middle of that lake by now. There almost certainly would have been some nearby, lakefront property being as valuable as it's become here. As it happens, we could probably stand to have another several feet of water show up there before we'd have to worry about the Little League fields next door being flooded, and several feet more before any buildings are threatened.

Click on the pictures to enlarge them. Have a good Sunday.


4 comments:

Unknown said...

In San Diego, the idiots that run the county have allowed construction of housing and such.

Then the residents scream when a very wet year sees their houses/condos swamped and/or flooded.

The assholes built on a flood plain and the builders KNEW it was a flood plain.

Cujo359 said...

They seem to get away with that in lots of places. Thankfully, it's a little harder to do that here now. There are legitimate complaints about the planning process, but it at least tries to evaluate hazards like this and avoid them.

merlallen said...

what did you think about the weather yesterday? i had no idea you from King county, too

Cujo359 said...

Even the day after you wrote that comment, I honestly couldn't remember what the weather was like. Generally speaking, it's been great this year. It's sorta like the other coast is getting our bad winter karma this time.