I am nearing the end of my project: The Intersection of Man-Made and Nature in Contra Costa County and Surrounds (meaning just over the border into Alameda County basically), and here is what I have found:
No visible signs of pollution (because there are none), well-managed and clean landfills (which I did not take pictures of because they were uninteresting), garbage by the side of the road only twice, lots of wild life (except for deer who mainly seem to occupy the senior community I live in), lots and lots and lots of well managed and kept clean open space, very low level of ugliness, nature and man-made living side by side peacefully, a seemingly well contained and well-run and clean Shell refinery in Martinez (the same might not be said for the Shell refinery in Richmond, but I didn't explore Richmond -- I kept to central county), other seemingly well-contained and clean industrial plants, too many people, and too many cars, and houses being built up to the edges of Mt. Diablo State Park. So overall the county is doing very well considering how rapidly it has grown over the last twenty years. That doesn't mean there isn't pollution in the Delta (some maybe from refinery plants, and it's not visible and there is only the tail end of the Delta in CC County) and it doesn't mean there weren't bigger problems in the past. The main crunch facing this county and others in the area in the future is continued over population. East Bay Mud has been warning for years that if over development occurs then there may well not be enough water for everyone, especially in drought years. But certain areas now have to have approval for new development and it has been that way for quite a while, partly to avoid ugliness and partly for the water situation. So I'd say CC County is basically coping with the environmental problems of overpopulation as well as any county in California, which on the whole, is overpopulated and will continue to grow in population exponentially. That's my mini-report on what I have seen. :-) I just got Lightroom, but have not played with its B&W conversion yet, so this is still done in Elements 5. I also have more shots of this from slightly different angles and focal lengths. So this may not be the best one. http://members.aol.com/eactivist/PAWS/pages/room.htm Comments welcome. Marnie aka Doe :-) --------------------------------------------- Warning: I am now filtering my email, so you may be censored. ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
