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Dock of The Bay

New Heroes Commissioned?

As the Blue Angels disappeared into the horizon over Navy Marine Corps Stadium in Annapolis, so, perhaps, did the sense of dishonor that has hung over the Naval Academy since recent scandals over cheating and sex harassment.

Words of praise coupled with gentle words of advice from leaders — President Bill Clinton; Navy Secretary John H. Dalton; and Rear Admiral Thomas C. Lynch, superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy — filled the place during commissioning.

“You have just completed the most selective and demanding personal growth program in the country. You are the best in the nation,” Lynch said.

Dalton recalled that he was inspired to public service by John F. Kennedy, as was Clinton. He described Clinton’s chance meeting with Kennedy that may have set the young Arkansan on his path to the presidency.

“There must have been public leadership in that handshake,” Lynch said.

Clinton praised the new graduates for the contribution they are making. “If someone asks you what you are, there is no better answer than a Naval officer,” he said.

Then the president challenged the class of ‘94. “The deeds of the generations before you have included the liberation of Europe, the GI Bill, interstate highways, trade, peace and prosperity,” he said.

“You must ask yourselves what your deeds will be.”

—Liz Zylwitis

In Calvert, the Cost of Country Living

The advantages of country living don’t come cheap these days, and they’ll get a tad more expensive under a new $1,200 “impact fee” proposed in Calvert County.

The “charm” in which Calvert County takes pride is a boom commodity: little country Calvert is Maryland’s fastest growing county.

Fifty-seven thousand people are dotted in an ever-thickening pattern among farms and forests that still cover two-thirds of the 220-square-mile peninsula between the lower Patuxent River and the middle Chesapeake Bay that makes up Calvert County. Pronounce that “Culvert” if you want to sound like an old-timer.

Living and working on the land, old-timers got country living for free.

“When I was in grade school, the teacher asked us to raise our hands if our fathers were farmers. All but one of us did. Last week, my son’s teacher asked his class the same thing. He was the only one to raise his hand,” says farmer Allen “Sonny” Swann of Lower Marlboro.

It’s another kind of country living that attracts most newcomers to Calvert. They want farms and forests to look at, plus security, good schools, swimming pools and trash pickup.

“As people demand services, we have to have a way to pay,” says Sherrod Sturrock, the county’s capital projects coordinator. “Impact fees” team up with bonds as this generation’s price tag.

Every new home permit is taxed $3,000 to guarantee school room for all the kids Calvert grows. Last year an additional $350 impact fee was imposed on new houses to landfill the three-quarters of a ton of trash every county resident throws away yearly.

Now, a $1200 impact fee may be tacked on to new subdivision lots to pay for park lands and recreation, including preserving some of the open space that’s the charm for many people who move to the county.

Those impact fees will reach $4,550 if commissioners approve the new $1200 land preservation and recreation fee. Approval is expected:.

“It’s the right concept,” said Commissioner Joyce Lyons Terhes. But Terhes, the only commissioner to vote against the county’s new budget adds that it still “needs lots of work.” Developers also support the fee, though they want modifications in their favor.

Add up as those dollars do, they’re well-invested. The land preservation and recreation fee will benefit everybody who lives in Calvert or visits.

Trails, scenic highways, even waterways are being developed to link the county’s chain of natural, historic and cultural wonders. From Prince Frederick, you might canoe to the Chesapeake Bay along Parker’s Creek, the nation’s last undisturbed watershed. You might bike, hike or ride a horse nine miles to Sunderland, along the grade prepared for the never-laid Baltimore–Drum Point Railway (see “Railroad Ghosts” in Vol 2: 10).

You might explore the county by car, driving some of Maryland’s most scenic byways.

“We plan to have a series of parks lining the Bay and the Patuxent River, each with a story to tell that we think everybody should know,” says Randi Vogt, who coordinates Calvert’s plan to stay green and charming.

“Heritage” Tourism: Seeds of Cooperation?
Southern Maryland would like you to come on down for a visit. It’s pretty country down here, with history and culture paying nature nice compliments. That’s what tourism directors, curators, park rangers, planners and pols hereabouts will tell you.

The praises they sing are all true, but self-interest is pitching the praises louder nowadays.

Listen, for example, to Sen. Paul Sarbanes: “Southern Maryland is rich in historical, architectural, and natural resources,” he says.

“But imagine the potential if these individual resources were linked together in creative partnerships to stimulate local pride — and to generate promising new economic opportunities. It could truly enrich Southern Maryland.”

Sarbanes, a Democrat, stands for reelection in this unpredictable political year and it’s in his self-interest to promote tourism.

It’s in Southern Maryland’s self-interest, as well, to link economic opportunities to heritage and resources. Historically, this is a region of forests, farms and fishing — each a declining resource. Today’s question is how to keep the region prosperous without burying its character under concrete, minimalls and smog.

“The character of Southern Maryland is certainly not what we see along Rt. 301,” says Bill Matuszeski, EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program.

Heritage tourism may be one way “to preserve for the future what the past has given us,” suggests Talmage Reeves, Calvert County’s director of economic development.

All of them were speaking at a recent workshop exploring the potential of “creative partnerships” to promote tourism.

As fair as the day was the setting: Thomas Stone National Historic Site. The old Charles County farm down near Port Tobacco looks about as pastoral as it did when Thomas Stone put his signature on the Declaration of Independence. Back in Revolutionary days, Thomas Stone’s plantation produced economic opportunity. It could again if promises made at this workshop are kept.

Federal, state and even local governments promised to invest money in historic and environmental preservation.

But people hold the real promise. When they rediscover their own sense of connectedness to their special places, as Larry Knudsen put it, “the engine starts to lead the train.”

Over on the Eastern Shore where Knudsen owns a bed and breakfast, the train is rolling. There, cooperation between Worcester and Somerset counties has led to a fully developed lower Eastern Shore Heritage Plan and made the Beach to Bay Indian Trail a well-defined and increasingly popular circuit through that region’s distinctive natural and human ecology.

Southern Maryland’s already boasts plenty of stops; now the track for its train is being laid.

“Today we’re weaving a tapestry that allows change and growth and keeps Southern Maryland the kind of place we want to live,” said EPA’s Matuszeski.

Keep reading New Bay Times for heritage tours of the Beach to Bay Indian Trail and Southern Maryland.

Cranking Up Piney Point
Tired of reading depressing stories about the decline of Chesapeake oysters?

Here’s a cheery little oyster tale.

In the new federal budget, a House Appropriations subcommittee has added $500,000 to jumpstart a promising oyster hatchery project at Piney Point in St. Mary’s County.

“Our watermen are losing jobs, our state is losing a historic industry, our people are losing a delicacy,” declared Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., announcing the appropriation this week in Deale.

Aquaculture is an iffy proposition and you’ll find plenty of naysayers who’ll tell you it can’t happen here. But the Department of Natural Resources has put together a sound plan.

The Piney Point project is designed to nurture scads of tiny oysters in tanks and plant them in the Bay’s rivers, thereby creating beds free of the devastating Dermo and MSX diseases.

The half-million amendment now goes to the Appropriations Committee, where Hoyer— up for re-election this year — has extra incentive to make sure that it stays alive.

Treasure Hunting at Stewart’s Shipyard
This story started in 1751, when Stephen Stewart bought 26 acres along the West River and began building ships: 20-ton skiffs all the way up to 280-ton ocean merchants. The story is still not over.

When the British found the shipyard in 1781, they attacked. A 20-gun vessel about 80 feet long went up in flames.

Two centuries later, in the 1950s, a neighbor saw the charred skeleton of the ship’s hull at low tide.

Last week, a small group of archeologists resumed the search for the sunken galley. Headed by Bruce Thompson, an underwater archeologist for the state, they probed the river bottom with 10-foot rods and metal detectors.

Then, based on their readings, they focused their attention near Dean Hall’s Galesville dock. When their pump motor broke, divers Jason Moser of Annapolis and Kevin Holliday of Ellicott City dug with their hands.

They had found a fallen tree.
“Somedays everything goes well. Then there’s today,” observed Lukas Strout, a diver.

Said Hall: “We know the ship is down there, we just have to find it.”

—Steven Anderson

Masters of Disaster Close Shop

For a disaster, it’s been real laid back.

That’s what the Federal Emergency Management Agency inspectors say as they pack up their computers, calculators and pencil sharpeners, having completed work in the aftermath of this winter’s ice storm.

FEMA set up camp in Annapolis March 21, after President Bill Clinton declared six Maryland counties eligible for disaster relief for the ice storms that hit in February.

Declaring this one of the slowest disasters they’ve worked on, FEMA is now decamping, having promised between $10 and $12 million in disaster relief to six southern Maryland and Eastern Shore counties. Claims now will be reviewed and paid by the state.

Used to working 12-hour days seven days a week to speed disaster relief to victims of earthquake, flood and hurricane, FEMA staff have played computer solitaire and Klotski as they waited … and waited … for state and local governments to compile their figures. FEMA is reimbursing three-fourths of all the money local governments spent on the storms of last winter.

The folks at FEMA — many of them military reservists or consultants on call — are eager to return home after a couple of months away. They’ve come to Maryland from West Virginia, New York, New Jersey, and Texas. In a disaster of major proportions like Hurricane Hugo or the Los Angeles earthquake, they can spend a year away from home. Often, they must sort through stacks of claims taller than they are.

They find bright spots along the way, like the story of the Mississippi farmer who put in a claim for the loss of his pet beaver.

As the waters rose, the farmer said, the beaver’s cage came unlocked. Freed, he ate a bird and died. That claim was not allowed.

Another farmer put in a claim for his 12 drowned horses. The auditor adjusted the claim by horsepower per hour and reimbursed the farmer for hay under the category of fuel.

Cut the Hook — and Stay out of the Sun
Did it ever occur to you how much our elders lied to us? Like when we were kids they told us to go out in the sun; it was good for us, and while out there scrub the skiff, or hoe the garden. Or when we were told if a fish was badly hooked to just cut the hook off. The fish’s body juices would “corrode the hook away.”

Years later and bothered by skin cancers we learn that we probably killed more fish than we saved by cutting off the hooks of fish hooked to deeply to be removed. After tests in the wild and in the National Aquarium, DNR now tells us to make every effort to remove a hook set beyond the mouth of a fish.

Tests concluded that fish with hooks deep in their throat or stomach might seem peppy when we cut them free, might even eat for a few days or more, but well over one-half of them eventually perish. Tissue builds up around the hook (it usually doesn’t corrode away), and weeks or months later fatal infection sets in.

To give the fish a better chance for survival, DNR suggests a new device called the Dehooker, a long rigid wire with loop at the end that, when inserted, follows the line to the hook to provide leverage to free the barb.
If the hook remains stubborn, cut the line, but not at the lip. leave enough line half again as long as the fish to give it a little leverage to help cough it out. For many of us, it’s too late to avoid the skin cancers, but we might still be able to save a few fish.

—Bill Burton

Second Looks
No more delays. The Bay Sox’s Bowie home, Prince George’s stadium, opens its doors as scheduled — and rescheduled. No kidding, this time. You’ll hear “Play Ball!” at the home of the Bay Sox for the first time at 7:05pm Thursday, June 16. That’s game time for play Mondays through Saturdays. Sunday games begin at 2:05pm. Call 800/956-4004 to reserve your seat. Or come right to the stadium gates off Rt. 301 just south of Rt. 50.

One hundred fifty Great Potomac Clean-up volunteers (Vol. 2: 9) hauled over nine tons of trash out of the “Nation’s River.” In the haul were tires, bottles, cans, plastic and it’s your guess how many balls of all shapes and sizes. Guess how many were in the sack on the cover of that issue of New Bay Times and win a prize from Hard Bargain Farm: 301/292-5665.

Way Downstream...
Along the Chesapeake, we complain about a bluefish shortage. Listen to the lament of others. Salmon fishing has turned so bad in Oregon and Washington states that President Clinton declared the region a disaster area last week and gave them $16.7 million.

And what would old “Hank” Thoreau think of this — Massachusetts authorities said that the fish in Walden Pond are too polluted with mercury to eat...

Speaking of mercury, there’s a ruckus in the Midwest over those L.A. Gear shoes that light up. Wisconsin and Michigan already have banned them because of the potential that the gram of mercury in the heel might escape and pollute.

Now, environmental advocates in Illinois are demanding the same law so that stores in neighboring states don’t cross the border and dump their sparkling footwear in the Land of Lincoln...

Where do college business students want to work when they graduate? Here’s where they don’t want to work — for polluting companies. In a new poll, 36 percent of MBA candidates said they wouldn’t work for a company that has environmental problems.

Over 80 percent said they wouldn’t work in the tobacco industry but just 26 percent ruled out a company in the liquor business.

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Editorial

When Picnics Are A Crime

In North Beach, the town council has given us a parable for our times in voting to ban picnicking on the town beach starting June 1.

In case you missed it, North Beach passed an anti-picnicking ordinance to control the trash that beach-goers leave behind. The vote was 3-2, and judging by the remarks of opponents, the brouhaha is not yet over.

This is not an issue of black and white; right or wrong. On one hand, we’re tempted to say that incorrigible litterers, the idiots who strew their cans and greasy chicken wrappers on public land, ought to forfeit some of their fun.

After all, North Beach has done a fine job in restoring its pier and creating a fetching public space in a region where access to the Bay is rare. Who wants to curl their naked toes around a bottle of Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink and watch hamburger wrappers skipping across the horizon?

On the other hand, a picnic ban is, on its face, draconian. What about the responsible folks who keep track of their trash and cart it home with them? Maybe even recycle it. Haven’t their rights being unfairly stripped away. You betcha.

So what’s the answer?

The town council, though well-intentioned, acted too swiftly. Perhaps, just perhaps, education will work. Put up some smart signs telling beach-goers that they are on the verge of losing their right to eat, drink and be merry.

Then send somebody out to gently remind people of the rules. Maybe Joe Horty, who sponsored the ordinance, will volunteer.

It is not too late to take this approach. It will be necessary, anyway, because the ban is sloppily written and unenforceable. On one hand, the ordinance states that it “is not intended to prevent individuals from bringing food or drink onto the beach for limited personal use.”

But the ordinance prohibits “coolers or large food containers of any kind” and declares bluntly that “it is intended to prevent picnicking on the beach.”

Does this mean that you must eat your potato salad by yourself from your Tupperware bowl that sat in the sun all day?

Who’ll be there to take you to the hospital when food poisoning strikes?

Also, what yahoo worries about a penalty that amounts to less than a case of drinkable beer?

Okay, okay, here’s our solution. Put up a sign that reads:

if you drop your cans, bottles or banana peels
you will be lowered into A pit of slimy eels

Weekly and Never Meekly
With this issue, New Bay Times becomes a weekly paper. For well over a year, we have come to you every two weeks.

In word and deed, our readers have told us that they can’t get enough of a good thing. Same goes for our many advertisers, who have been suggesting that we turn weekly so that they can double their success from our partnership.

Now we have more space, and more timeliness, in bringing you news that is critical to the Chesapeake Bay. We will have more features, more columns, more humor, more Bill Burton and extra stories on boating and Bay sports.

And yes, we will continue looking out for your rights while offering more suggestions for quality living in clean surroundings.

So get in the swing of things. Pick up New Bay TimesWeekly twice as often or look in your mailbox for more surprises. And let us know how we can do an even better job in bringing you the news that suits you, not the news that scares you.

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Commentary

Brown Bagging It
by Sonia Linebaugh

A plain-looking brown bag is revolutionizing the way we handle our food trash.

Imagine a yummy brown bag lunch. More important, imagine your lunch leftovers, including wrappings, liquids, knife, fork and spoon thrown back into the bag. But not into the trash. This bag is carried off by your recycler to be added to a row of such bags at a waste treatment facility. The resulting compost turns into rich organic usable soil.

Imagine this, too: A brown bag kept under the kitchen sink. In it go all those things you now put down the garbage disposal. This brown bag doesn’t smell and doesn’t leak. When it’s full, you carry it out to your backyard compost pile and toss it in. There, the bag and its contents turn into rich usable garden soil.

Imagine still more: Huge brown bags at cafeterias everywhere: schools, colleges, hospitals, office buildings. All those reusable organic scraps thrown away without smell, without mess, without hours and gallons of water spent washing slop buckets. All those rich resources carried away on garbage trucks that no longer stink up your summer as they pass. All that rich potential reused — efficient, cost effective and mess-free.

Imagine! This revolutionary brown bag is now on the market.

A brown paper bag lined with cellulose is the seemingly simple innovation that finally makes composting succeed on both large and small scale.

Developed by Woods End Research Lab in Maine, the bag was meant for municipal waste in cities. The Park Slope community of Brooklyn, New York is finishing up a successful four-year in kitchen composting test. Mississauga, Ontario and Greenwich and Fairfield, Connecticut have also completed trials and are exploring full-time programs. The cellulose lining of the kitchen scrap bag helped people overcome their two main objections to composting: mess and smell.

In city facilities on Staten Island, 32 gallon bags have been used as part of the routine at commercial kitchens. Food waste is disposed of straight into the bags. There is no smell for kitchen workers or refuse collectors, no washing out of soiled pails, no sending soiled water down drains to be dealt with at water treatment plants. The potential for water savings is, in itself, immense.

The bags are trucked to an open “wind row” composting site. There they are piled in long rows where the wind can blow over them. A specially built machine straddles the rows while mixing the compost and aerating it. Although the site is adjacent to an open landfill, it has been found to attract no rats, gulls, or feral animals.

“Extensive testing proves it’s perfectly possible to compost food waste scraps on a large scale,” says Johnathan Collinson, senior project director at Woods End.

When backyard composters heard about the bags, they had to have them. Arthur Jackson of Woods End says the company gladly bowed to consumer demand and is now marketing one gallon cellulose-lined bags through gardening supply catalogues.

My bag came from the farm where I pick up my share of the harvest every Thursday afternoon. Organic farmer Pat Bramhall gives one to each of her crop shareholders to bring kitchen scraps back to her compost bin. She heard about the bags at a Community Supported Agriculture conference in Pennsylvania.

As for the completely compostable lunch. It took place at Hilton Hotel, Walt Disney World, at a conference on arboretums. The bag contents were piled at a separate site, tested over time and pronounced compost. The idea works. Consumer demand will make it work well.

One source for biodegradable kitchen compost bags is Gardeners Supply Co., Burlington, VT., 800/727-7755. Each bag holds about a gallon of scraps; 25 bags cost $14.95. Ask your own garden supplier to carry the bags.

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Bay Reflections

All Together Now: “I See the Water”
by Nancy B. Kelly

When I was a girl, my parents owned two homes, one in Camp Springs, Md. and the other — my favorite — on the Bay. Every weekend we would pack the car and drive to the Chesapeake. We always left on Fridays as early as possible after school or as soon as my father could get home from the Naval Research Laboratory in southwest Washington, where he worked.

I loved getting ready to go “to the beach.” For the few days we would be there we didn’t need many clothes, so each of us used a brown paper bag with our names written with black grease pencil on the side. These we put in the kitchen by the back door so that we would be ready to load the car.

My mother had much more to do to prepare the bags of groceries she would need. It seemed to me that her concentration on this task took an interminable amount of time. In went a box of vanilla wafers, a Tyler’s Ham, a jar of Postum and a can of Old Bay Seasoning.

With the bags on the floor, my excitement grew. I watched the street for my father’s 1959 silvery-green Pontiac to turn the corner. When he arrived, I ran quickly through the house thinking that maybe I should bring one more treasured item to the beach. The moment of decision was passing quickly but there was still time to take that one something that I might regret if I were to leave it behind.

I glanced at my Troll Doll … or maybe I should take my wonderful baton to practice with. I could march up and down the road twirling mightily in front of the sparkling Bay in the breeze. My brother’s worn football and my sister’s domed, hooded hair dryer and pink sponge rollers stood next to the bags. Just seeing their choices next to mine made for imagining what the weekend would bring.

With us running back and forth to help, our father packed the trunk. The finality of the trunk’s closing marked the beginning of the adventure.

My mother and father sat in the front seat and I was comfortably ensconced between my brother and sister in the back. I knew the way by heart and I anticipated the feel of the road under the wheels of the car, charting our progress over the familiar route. There, on my right, was the big red-and-white water tower at Andrews Air Force Base. A little further was the race track sporting with movement as we drove through Upper Marlboro.

When we passed over the bridge at Wayson’s Corner, I would see people fishing on the tiny threads of shoreline along the Patuxent River. I felt privileged heading to the mighty, wide Chesapeake Bay.

As we neared our destination, we played the game. On the main road into our fair haven is a little hill after a bend in the road. When you reach the crest of the hill, you can see the Bay above the tops of the trees if you look straight ahead. The first one of us to see the water would call out as fast and with as much exuberance as we could manage: “I see the water. I see the water.”

These words were sung with the tune of a child taunting another as if to say, ”I see the water Na Na Na Na Na.” Soon, all of us would be shouting “I see the water” and a winner would need to be decided.

Down the hill a short way and around another sharp bend in the road, a beautiful lake came into view with the Bay far in the distance. Then with new enthusiasm it would be time for the second phase of the contest and each of us would try to be the first to announce: “I see the water. I see the water.”

This is Nancy Kelly’s second reflection on summers in Fairhaven for New Bay Times.

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