As an environmental reporter, I often hear expressions of disbelief like, "I can't believe the government would let this happen," "I can't believe no one warned us" or " I can't believe we were lied to." These expressions of disbelief come from average people who are unknowingly victimized by the government or some company. Most of the time I have sympathy for these people as their heart wrenching stories could easily be mine.

However, there are times when I come across a scene like the one in this picture I took at Mount Storm Lake in Grant County, West Virginia. My sympathy for these people was lost after the first five minutes of arriving when I started gagging from the air I was breathing. Who in their right mind would recreate so close to a coal-fired power station supplying electricity to about two million people in the Baltimore-Washington, DC metro area? Are these people insane?

The attraction is the water temperature, which is 20 to 25 degrees above normal. The lake is used to cool the power plant. One website claims water temperatures stay in the nineties during the fall and reach 100 degrees in the summer.

Dominion's website, the company managing the plant, says it uses the latest technology that removes 99 percent of the fly ash and 95 percent of the sulfur dioxide. I don't care what technology the power plant uses, it cannot be healthy to swim in that water or breathe the air so close to the plant. I was there for only five minutes before I started gagging, gasping for air and feeling sick. Wake up people! Use common sense. Do you really think it's a good idea just because a sign says it is?