Weiss Lake is in desperate need of a scrubbing. By some estimates, as many as 14,000 recreational lot owners have been dumping their sewage in the lake for decades. In fact, a few years ago the Coosa River and Weiss Lake were named among the five most polluted water systems in the country.

So it's official: the “Crappie Capital of the World” is considered by many to be quite crappy, indeed.

That's not a good thing for one of the few truly unique things our county can lay claim to. Weiss Lake is a treasure that sets us apart from so many other counties in rural Alabama which have no one-of-a-kind claim to fame, no real place on the map, and the resulting stagnant tax base.

If you think now's as good a time as any to clean up Weiss Lake, then there has never been a better time to say so to your county commissioner. In fact, Probate Judge Melvyn Salter last week told members of the county's Industrial Development Authority that he believes the current batch of commissioners is on the verge of finally trying to solve the sewage problem.

“I feel the County Commission is very open to doing what the law requires in taking the necessary steps to begin the cleanup of Weiss Lake,” Salter said Wednesday morning.

It sounds like a no-brainer, an easy decision. But Weiss Lake has been here for 50 years, and there have been laws in place – laws written for the explicit purpose of cleaning up the lake – for nearly a decade. Still, I'm writing about this and you're reading about it.

It's senseless and disgraceful, and the list of reasons why nothing has been done is as long as your arm and as old as the lake itself. First and foremost, Birmingham-based Alabama Power built this reservoir, named it after one of the most esteemed engineers in company history and then spent decades slowly turning the man's name into mud through general neglect of its own rules.

Also, in years past a loud handful of out-of-state lot owners is said to have lobbied the County Commission to maintain the status quo every time it even considered trying to clean up its act. It's true. For some reason, otherwise sensible people have practically shouted out loud — in a public forum, no less — that they would rather risk floating in feces than see the law of the land enforced.

Sounds stupid, right? But in those peoples' defense, no one in the county government ever cared enough to compel them to do the right thing. (Thanks for setting an example for others to follow, Alabama Power.) Unfortunately, there have been plenty of times in this county's past when a few boisterous voices were enough to persuade otherwise reasonable, sensible commissioners to look the other way when it came to Weiss Lake.

Possibly out of fear that the county and state could be hit with a crippling environmental lawsuit, the head of the Alabama Department of Public Health was in Centre last month urging quick action by the commissioners. Sometime soon Wade Sprouse, Elbert St. Clair, Kimball Parker and Carlton Teague will likely consider an ordinance that would establish a countywide enforcement office and actually punish people who dump sewage into Weiss Lake. Here's the rub: If these commissioners finally do what someone else should have done a long time ago, the few who shouted down all those previous attempts are probably going to start screaming again.

Still, Judge Salter said he believes Sprouse, St. Clair, Parker and Teague will do the right thing. It seems impossible to me that they might not, but plenty of the men and women who sat in those high-backed chairs before them found some reason not to — possibly because they only heard from an ignorant, apathetic few.

I, too, am hopeful ... But all the same, let's make sure the commissioners hear from the rest of us this time around. Their office phone number is 256-927-3668.

Let’s not let a few dozen derelicts ruin this place for the rest of us. We must tell this County Commission that we will support them if they act. This is our home for heaven's sake, and Weiss Lake is our back yard and our thoroughfare and our landscape and our swimming pool and our drinking fountain and much, much more.  

And it's got sewage in it.