Day of Niagara

I have seen Niagara Falls in the winter, not completely frozen but with ice on the surrounding rocks and in the splash pool, and the walkway and observation deck coated with snow, ice and hoarfrost. It was a weekday afternoon in December with temperatures down in the teens, and no other tourists were around - we had the unique view all to ourselves.

I've actually seen the Falls many times and in other seasons, but what with today being the Vernal Equinox and the sixth day of Spring season in the Universal Solar Calendar and all, I choose to imagine the Falls in a seasonally appropriate manner.

Buffalo and the City of Niagara Falls are in an industrial belt developed along the Niagara River between Lakes Erie and Ontario. As an environmental consultant, I had clients in that corridor and trips to the Buffalo/Niagara area were common. If time allowed (and it almost always did), we drove over to the overlook to see the Falls.

The sad truth is there are a lot of industrial wastewater discharges along the Niagara River, as well as  upstream into Lake Erie at Cleveland, Sandusky, and Toledo. But the good news is that at least the volatile organic part of that pollution, the benzene and toluene and chloroethenes and -ethanes, are stripped from solution in water by aeration, and Niagara Falls is, in one sense, one very large water aerator, effectively stripping all those volatile organics from the river water. "God's own air stripper," we jokingly called it. 

I don't have the data to prove it, but I'm convinced water in upstream Lake Ontario (below the Falls) is much cleaner that the water in downstream Lake Erie (above the Falls), at least with regard to volatile organic chemicals.  Your heavy metals, PCBs, PFAS, pesticides, and so on are another matter.

So far, a day-and-a-half in, I'm sticking with my prediabetes diet. Same breakfast and lunch as yesterday. Dinner tonight will probably be an herb-rusted chicken breast with some diced sweet potatoes. Fruits for dessert and for snacks if I want.

The Moms has been transferred from the hospital to rehab to learn to walk with her new, replacement hip. No word yet if this will take days, weeks, months, or more.