By: Gil Smart, Treasure Coast Newspapers
The scenes from atop the Roosevelt Bridge Saturday could have been from the "Lost Summer" or the "mean, green" summer of 2016.
Instead, we're facing a new crisis, requiring new screams of protest.
Dozens of clean-water activists, filled with righteous indignation, walked the bridge to demand something be done to save our river and curtail the discharges from Lake Okeechobee.
The event was no doubt cathartic for those who took part. Watching our waterways deteriorate yet again is both depressing and infuriating. The protest on the bridge, and others like it, provide an opportunity to vent.
That's good and necessary.
We're beginning to wonder, though, if it's enough.
What is it, specifically, we are asking for this time around?
Some of Saturday's signs might have been recycled from previous crises. A few demanded we "buy the land" and send water south of Lake O.
That's already happening, via the reservoir backed by state Sen. Joe Negron.
Stop the discharges? Everybody wants this, but realistically, were the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to close the floodgates, the water level in Lake Okeechobee would rise. That could ultimately pose a hazard to the Herbert Hoover Dike around the lake and the communities south of the lake that rely on the dike for protection…