Annapolis Capital Punishment

CP has been involved in the struggle to protect the Bay for so long that I almost qualify for "old fart" status. Over the many years, my ideas about how best to do this have evolved, and it seems to me that the real bogeyman here is private property and what has been labeled as "the tragedy of the commons." Nowhere is this more evident than with The Critical Areas Law. When it was enacted decades ago, it was seen as a far-reaching and very progressive state law to manage growth and development along the water's edge, seen as crucial to protecting the Bay. CP wrote letters and testified at hearings, and I clearly recall the fear mongering and whiny complaints emanating from developers, Realtors and even a front group set up by a business association masquerading as private property owner's defense group. "Oh, woe is me, this will make my property value go to nothing! We'll never be able to build again! The sky is falling, the economy will be ruined!" It's funny how the deep pocketed, power elites describe environmentalists as fear mongers, yet they have the concentrated money and power to loudly moan and fight, fight and fight.

Somehow or another, environmental sanity prevailed, or so we thought, and Maryland enacted the far-reaching Critical Areas Law. However, if you poke around the water as much as I do, you'll notice that in the last 25 years, there has been more and more and more over-development of our Critical Area. What happened? When we passed the law, it went through many modifications and was watered down, weakened and left many loopholes. It's just darn hard to fight to protect our Bay--darn hard. Environmentalists were and still are up against powerful foes. The rich and powerful build what they want and where they want.

But time has taken its toll on our waterfront. It's as if every time we make progress on the environmental front, it's a two steps forward and a step or two backwards. And our Bay keeps dying.

It's ironic that with over 400 miles of shoreline, our county has no boat for inspectors to visit and view waterfronts to check on building violations. However, it's been left up to privately-funded citizen's support groups to do this kind of monitoring. See today's Baltimore Sun for one perspective.

www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bay_environment/bal-te.md.critical21jan21,0,1779024.story?coll=bal_tab01_layout