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Letters to the Editor

We welcome your opinions and letters – with name and address. We will edit when necessary. Include your name, address and phone number for verification. Mail them to Bay Weekly, P.O. Box 358, Deale, MD 20751 • E-mail them to [email protected]. or submit your letters on line, click here

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When We’ve the Will, We’ll find the Way

Dear Bay Weekly:

I can count on Bay Weekly! The editorial [Aiming a Population Bomb at the Bay] and the interview with Sen. Roy Dyson [Why Our Critical Areas Law Doesn’t Work, Vol. xiv, No. 8: Feb. 22] echo my deep concerns about the state of Chesapeake Bay.

On a past Sunday morning, my friend Ed Becke and I looked out at the mud tide on Herring Bay. We saw maybe 40 swans, several kinds of ducks and dozens of gulls flying in circles, then dipping down to snatch something from the inch or two of water.

Ed has been in Fairhaven for 80 years. He remembers, as a teenager, looking down into 10 feet of water and seeing the oysters on the bottom. He didn’t have to blindly scoop up oysters; from his boat, using tongs, he could grab just the oyster he wanted. In 1955, he built a diving platform for the neighborhood kids. At that time, if he stood on the platform and looked down, the bottom of the Bay was still visible through six or seven feet of water.

This particular morning, Ed looked at the mud tide and introduced me to the concept that the water was drawn out into the ocean and returned fresher and healthier. So I get to thinking: If we could just stop the pollutants that go into the Bay, after a while the Bay would heal itself.

Wishful thinking? Possibly. But if we really wanted to clean up the Bay (and as Sen. Dyson says, maybe we don’t), we could do it.

—Barbara Miller, Fairhaven

Going to War over Yellow Perch

Dear Bay Weekly:

Concerning the recent yellow perch hearings, I feel Bill Burton has been at best misled, or at worst lied to [Vol. xiv, No. 9: March 2].

When citizens concerned about resource conservation, equitable allocation of common property resources and other issues have exhausted all administrative remedies and have found DNR unwilling or incapable of resolving them, there are few alternatives except to stand up and be heard. Their reward for all this from you is being branded as “jackasses.” I think I’ll join the jackasses and stand up for sound science, not Political Science.

—Bill Curry, Lusby

Dear Bay Weekly:

I am saddened by Mr. Burton’s rant against the recreational fishermen who took the time to speak out about DNR’s yellow perch proposal. Mr. Burton did not attend the public hearings that he describes, nor did he review the “science” he so adamantly defends. He was too busy defending his DNR cronies and denigrating everyone else to bother with such journalistic trivialities as reviewing both positions and objectively presenting both sides of the story. Had he done so, he may not have been quite so hasty to swallow the DNR “science” bait with such gusto. Instead, ol’ Bill proves that he is the easiest catch of the Bay.

—Larry Freed, Annapolis