Irony of this Environmental Disaster

Saturday's Joplin Globe carried a poignant OPED 'In Our View' piece, DNR Fouls Own Nest. It chronicled DNR's history of being dismissive to the threat of E. coli, and "even treated as lepers some of those water quality volunteers who warned that Missouri rivers and streams overflowed with fecal bacteria". Fast forward a few years and "By our count, the DNR has 50 state parks, and this summer it had to close swim beaches at a dozen of them, or about 25 percent." The Joplin Globe summarizes the current situation, "E.coli is doing very real damage to Missouri. The irony of this environmental disaster isn't lost on the state's residents, who note that the same agency responsible for water quality fouled its own parks as a result of lax enforcement and outright indifference." Joplin Globe, August 21, 2010