I felt the warm breeze caress my face as I stared off into the distance. Hues of red, orange, blue, and purple painted the evening sky, leaving me with a feeling of awe. As I began to scan the rest of my surroundings, I saw leafless trees, and the reflection of those trees on a pond devoid of any ripples, giving the large body of water the appearance of an elegant mirror. Fifty yards away from me was a stunning Great Blue Heron standing so motionless in the water that I mistook it for a piece of driftwood. Within two minutes of noticing the bird, it quickly extended its long white neck into the water and came up with a medium sized yellow perch. Short of a thin coat of snow covering the landscape, this was the most beautiful scene I could imagine for a mid-January afternoon.

That was my original response to Lums Pond State Park. I was awestruck and at peace, as I usually am when I go for a hike in an area that I have never explored before. This hike was different than any of the other’s I had ever gone on, however, because it was tainted with the fact that this land is polluted.

During the walk I began noticing trash everywhere we went. Near the shade of the sycamore trees were old Ziploc bags. Sitting in the water near the pier was old fishing line. Even next to the sign that said “Keep our parks clean” was old, crumpled newspaper. At first I was pensive, I wondered how much trash there really must be throughout the entire park, but that pensiveness quickly transformed into disgust. Assuming there were large amounts of hidden trash in the park, I could only imagine the amount of unknown chemicals that have leached into the park’s soil and water. Delaware is, and has been, the hub of chemical and manufacturing plants for an upwards of 60 years. Up until recently, no one cared about the effects of chemical contaminates in the environment, which is why it would make sense that this beautiful state park is likely poisoned with chemical runoff.

As I have been learning in class, nearly everything on this earth has been affected by human waste and chemicals, whether intentional or not. I decided to investigate if there was any recorded contamination in Lums Pond. Through a quick Google search I found the eBook, US 301 Corridor Improvement Between MD/DE State Line, New Castle County: Environmental Impact Statement, written in 1993. It stated that Lums Pond was so contaminated with fecal coliform and nuisance algae that it had to be closed down several times in the 1990’s. The eBook stated that, “Pollutant sources contributing to Lums Pond include failing septic systems, road runoff and contaminated groundwater.” I then found out that “fecal coliform” is a bacteria found in mammalian lower intestines. It is essentially poop. This beautiful landscape was so contaminated with feces that it had to be closed down multiple times in the short span of a decade.

What I also learned was that Lums Pond was originally built as a settling basin. A setting basin is a man-made pond that has the sole purpose of removing visible contaminants and settleable matter from wastewater. The Lums Pond State Park surrounds a body of water that was intentionally built to essentially be the garbage dump of wastewater for the New Castle area. On the Delaware State Parks website, the history of Lums pond claims that it was a dammed creek “used to fill the locks of the canals and power a small mill,” which presents a much less menacing history of this state park than its reality. People are expecting nothing other than a pleasant and natural getaway from life, but are unsuspectingly given a literal wasteland.