Living on the East Coast has been a shock to the system for this California country girl. There are lakes and rivers and creeks galore, but none safe to swim in. I once spent an entire day driving around the countryside in Pennsylvania searching for a clean a body of water: the lake was disgusting, creek was muddy and feces-ridden, and the wonderfully clean river had such a rough current that it was too dangerous to swim in.

On my Oregon sojourn last week I went with my uncle and cousin up to Trillium Lake, a totally gorgeous little place nestled below the picturesque Mt. Hood. We went kayaking and swimming, and my cousin showed me the ingenious, if socially awkward method, of floating in the water using a life jacket as a diaper.

The water was a bit green around the edges, as any good forest lake should be, and so very, very clean. It made me wonder why we have so many clean bodies of water in the West, and so few in the East. Is it sheer density of population? Longer history of industry? Less rain fall?

I tried to find out some information about this, and found an interesting feature on the EPA website called “Surf Your Watershed.” You can find various reports on sedimentation, toxins, etc… for your watershed, water usage levels and with a bit of clicking around – you can even find out of your local treatment plant is up on its inspections and has all the proper paperwork in place. Of course, this is a site brought to you by a hulking bureaucracy, so its more than a little confusing, but a little dedication will help you through it.

After finding a place too look up microbial water beastie contents, on a state by state basis, I was given the option to search for E Coli, and a bunch of other things I can’t pronounce. Another option was “virus”. That seemed pretty straight forward, so I searched for that and came up with a bit of data confirming my theory: In July 1998, with 20 plants reporting, California reported a 15 percent incidence of “virus” in untreated water samples. While Pennsylvania reported 55 percent with 20 plants reporting during the same period. You can also look up feces microbial content….. I couldn’t bring myself to.

Overheard at the lake; Irrational Exuberance: (in reference to bin Laden) “We catch that guy and its all easy, man. Gas will be a dollar a gallon.”

Stumble it!