Fourteen months ago, the citizenry was up in arms over the destruction of Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park by the failure of the Upper Taum Sauk reservoir. On the 5th of February, Ameren made official what some have suspected for some time--they intend to rebuild the reservoir.Ameren news release [1]
Instead of focusing attention on the engineering of this project, the media is spilling all their ink on the Jefferson City sideshow of Blunt-Nixon et al and changes of venue for the lawsuit (lawsuits?) and what the state wants from Ameren, and what they are likely to get--while little to no progress is being made at remediating the park, informing the public about the specifics of the rebuild proposal. Local Reynolds county sources are doing a better job of reporting what is happening on the ground than the big city dailies.
Black River News [2]
How do we refocus the major media on the important part of this story, and off of the fellows in clown suits? After all, even if the campground is moved, people are still going to (hopefully someday) be picnicking and swimming in that East Fork valley again.