| to remove the Bay from the dirty waters list by
a court ordered deadline of 2010.
As it turns out, there is still not sufficient
political will to actually implement the
agreement and to get the job done. And the
longer our elected officials wait, the more
expensive it gets.
We know the current price tag. If the states
and the federal government committed $3 billion
per year for the current decade, there is near
certainty that the 2010 deadline would be met.
We would have a cleaner Bay and river system
with water healthy enough to swim in even after
big rains, fish and shellfish abundant and safe to
eat, and a worldwide model of success.
It is not too late. And it does not have to
be so expensive.
At CBF, we follow the 80:20 rule: We believe
80 percent of the pollution can be reduced for
20 percent of the cost ($6 billion over 10 years).
We have been pushing the states and the federal
government to prioritize and focus their efforts
on those strategies most efficient to address the
problem, specifically re-engineering sewage
treatment plants to maximum efficiency and
helping farmers implement the best practices
and technologies to address agricultural runoff.
|
Real success has been achieved on the sewage
front, and if our leaders stick with the plan,
significant pollution reductions will be realized
in the next few years. On the agriculture front,
farm and environmental interests are working
in partnership as never before to encourage
adequate funding, training, and technical
assistance. One could almost begin to feel
optimistic.
Unfortunately, however, as winter turns to
spring, an all-too familiar reaction to a faltering
economy is re-emerging. In state legislatures
and at the federal level, we are seeing broken
promises and the retraction of promised funds.
Are we once again about to snatch defeat from
the jaws of victory?
BY JEFFERSON HOLLAND
ust under a century ago, more than 32,000
people earned their livelihoods harvesting
oysters on the Chesapeake Bay. They were
known as watermen, and their way of life is
synonymous with the Chesapeake and with
Maryland’s bucolic Eastern Shore. During the
past three decades, commercial overfishing has
effectively put an end to this unique piece of
American culture by draining the Bay, first of
oysters, and more recently, of crabs, and by
employing methods that swiftly put local
fishermen out of business.
William J. McNasby, son of Irish
immigrants fl eeing the potato famine, moved
his oyster-packing business from New Jersey
to Annapolis in 1886. To get an edge over
the competition, McNasby moved his
operation from City Dock to the other side
of Horn Point in 1919. Here, he employed
32 shuckers who were paid between 20 and
30 cents per gallon of oysters. As part of the
Annapolis Maritime Museum’s Oral History
Project, oyster shucker Lyle Smith recently
shared some early memories of working at
McNasby’s Oyster Co.
“I’m 67, and I worked at McNasby
before I went to school in the morning. I
would go down with my grandmother, I
was in the sixth grade, I think it was, when
|
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is 40
years old. We have seen downturns before. We
were not discouraged then, and we will not be
now. While history may yet record that a wellmeaning
but ultimately timid society lost the
Chesapeake Bay in the early years of the 21st
century, we see a brighter future. We believe
that leaders can be encouraged to recognize that
saving the Bay preserves the “national treasure”
President Reagan cited years ago. We know
that a victory for the Bay will demonstrate
that humans can, in fact, learn to marry
environmental, social, and economic prosperity
for all. The economy and the environment are,
after all, two sides of the same coin. We cannot
have one without the other.
Hand tonging for oysters at the mouth of the Severn
River, c. 1953. (Photograph by Marion E. Warren ©
M. E. Warren Photography, LLC 2008)
I started. My mother and grandmother and
grandfather, they were shuckers, and that’s how
I learned how to shuck oysters. And from there
I moved to unloading boats when they came
in, and from there I went to packing oysters
and shipping them, with McNasby.
“A boat got paid by the bushel, 10 cents
a bushel, I think it was, and then they went
up to a quarter a bushel. We’d go and unload
a boat, shovel out a big buy boat in a couple
of hours, because they usually had three, four,
five hundred bushels on them or more, and
after we did that he’d pay us, and then I’d go
on to school.” |
