Adam's Legend assignment

Topic: Environment (Pollution-In Water)

Basic idea: story of people always hanging out by a lake, swimming from time to time, after a few years lake slowly becomes more polluted, becomes unswimmable. Entire area gets closed off due to pollution issues.

A few friends walk through a park and into a small nearby forest. After a few minutes of walking, the friends find themselves in a clearing with a crystal clear lake in the middle. “This place is amazing!” The easily excitable friend had pointed out. The friends had decided that they would come back to the lake the next day to have a swim in the beautiful lake. On the second day of walking through the park, some of the friend had seen that there were signs down the road of construction of a new waste processing plant.

Over the coming weeks and months, the friends had visited the lush forest day by day, coming to the lake, and enjoying many hours at the lake swimming and enjoying themselves. As time went on however, they had found they had noticed that as the processing plant continued its construction, the waters had begun to darken. “Anyone notice something changing about the water?” one of the more observant of the friends had noticed. The other friends hadn’t really paid attention to it and continued to enjoy themselves with what they currently had.

One day, while all the friends were walking over, the one that noticed more had seen something odd along the way to the lake. “Guys, do you remember seeing a construction sign around here recently?” They had not noticed, and over the past several weeks, the amount of signs had multiplied exponentially to the point that there were enough to surround the general area of the entire forest. A construction worker had shown up a few minutes later while the friends were inspecting the quality of the lake and how the area around it had quickly turned into a wasteland.

“Sorry kids, but this lake is closed from it being too unsafe to swim in. You know pollution from the plant and all.” The worker had said before he returned to welding two pipes together to attach to the overall set that led to the lake. From then on, the friends could no longer go to the lake to spend time together and hang out. Eventually the friends began to grow distant from one another and eventually forgot about each other in the long run. The plant continued to run for years and years to come and the lake grew toxic to the point that going near it was a health hazard. Because of this, the area was forced to be deforested in order to keep people safe. The friends, although distant, after many years, wished that they could return to the lake they had spent so much time and enjoyed so much there, if only they had noticed what was happening to the lake before they delved in.