not so (continued)

Well, a "team" construction company has installed their tunnel-tubes, but alas! they have been placed end to end in a section of the slough where the water is contained at Monterey Commons and have been covered with earth. The vernal pool of usually-standing water beside the Jewish temple is dry; the pile of plant-covered rubble is razed and can be presumed to have been hurricane debris. A peephole the size of an adult tortoise-hole accepts/discharges water through concrete facing, while a former ditch/slough +/- 10 feet across is now a tunnel. Kingswood Terrace Road remains high and dry, for now.

The water from the St. Lucie River is presumably being tamed with such installations continued in an ongoing fashion. Although the river's flow can enter the slough near St. Lucie Boulevard, the probability that it will do so is lessened with such structures as the retaining-pond dam. The same type of peephole-tunnel runs beneath the short road that turns from Kingswood Terrace Road into the Monterey Commons but no water-flow has been observed through it and there is no standing water in it at the present time (its history may show otherwise). The slough/ditch appears to be a type of moat behind the Vista Pines/Ocean Palms residential complexes.

The front lawn of Ocean Palms retirement community on SE Ocean Boulevard (an apartment complex for the elderly) is sinking and fills with water after most rainstorms now. The premises sports such locally-bizarre public-holiday displays as Santa Claus with sleigh and reindeer amongst the palm trees and other nearby foliage. Ocean Palms is protected by Vista Pines condo complex at its southern boundary, but the moat-like slough behind Vista Pines discourages any thoughts of southward drift while the North Fork of the St. Lucie River surges toward the ocean a few blocks north of SE Ocean Boulevard.

Old folks with metal walkers trudge in and out from automobiles and along the sidewalk -- they are an elder-fabulous site.